cenar

Forms

cenar (first-person singular present ceno, first-person singular preterite cené, past participle cenado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cenar, also written çenar, inherited from Latin cēnāre (“to dine”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin verb is formed from cēna (“dinner”), the main Roman meal, eaten in the afternoon or evening.^[6] Corominas glosses the verb as eating at three in the afternoon.^[6][3] Spanish cena continues the noun.^[2]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese cear, Galician cear, Catalan cenar, Italian cenare, Romanian cina and Old French cener.^[7][8][9]

The noun goes back to *kertsnā (“meal”), and has cognates in Oscan and Umbrian; de Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *kert-s-nh₂- (“portion”), from a root meaning to cut.^[10] The form cēsnās quoted by Festus keeps the /s/ that Latin later lost before /n/.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy): Ý se echava mio Cid después que cenado fue “There my Cid lay down after he had dined”, before the angel Gabriel appears to him in a dream.^[12][2][3] In the Cid the cena is the meal at the end of a day's march, as opposed to the midday yantar.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the verb both intransitively and with the food as object: in Alfonso X's Estoria de España Christ cenó bread with his disciples.^[13] The religious sense of the Last Supper runs through the early texts, from the Fazienda de Ultra Mar to Berceo's Sacrificio de la misa.^[12][14] Nebrija in 1495 still defined cena as “a meal in the afternoon”, probably under Latin influence, but Berceo's cena is already eaten well after three.^[2]

Autoridades defined it as sitting down at table at night to eat, and recorded the proverb Más vale un no cena que cien Avicenas, “better one missed supper than a hundred Avicennas”, that is, a diet cures better than medicine.^[15] The Academy kept the proverb in its dictionaries throughout the 19th century.^[16][17] Cuervo collected the uses with and without an object, from Cervantes to Jovellanos.^[18] In Puerto Rico cenar is used mainly for a late meal on special occasions such as Christmas Eve.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has the participle cenado.^[12][3]
• c. 1237 – Berceo, Sacrificio de la misa: Christ wished to dine with his disciples.^[14][12]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses the verb with and without an object.^[13]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin coeno.^[20]
• 1543 – first record from the Americas, in Panama.^[21]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records Más vale un no cena que cien Avicenas.^[15]
• 1843 – the Academy also lists cenar as an obsolete masculine noun meaning cena.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin and the transitive use, as in cenar perdices.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To have dinner or supper, the last meal of the day: Esta noche cenamos tarde.^[4][1][22]
2. (transitive) To eat something for dinner: Cenaron sopa y una tortilla.^[4][22]

Word family

• cenador
• cenaduría

Related words

• cena
• cenáculo
• Latin cēnō
• Portuguese cear
• Italian cenare

Usage notes

The DLE lists a second cenar, a masculine noun meaning “supper” (el cenar), as obsolete; the Academy has recorded it as such since 1843.^[4][16][23] The phrase cena a oscuras, literally “sups in the dark”, was a nickname for a miser who saved even on the light he ate by.^[15][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 23
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cena
4. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. cenar
5. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cenar
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cēnō
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cenare
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1808
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 111
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cēna
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cenar
13. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. cenar
14. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 669
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 263
16. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 156
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 232
18. ^ Cuervo, Rufino José (1886–1893), Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana, vols. I–II (A–D), París: A. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 2, 111
19. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. cenar
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 323
21. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. cenar
22. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cenar
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 216