aire

Forms

aire f (plural aires)^[1] Old French aire, eire, haire, ere; the word was often masculine in Old French.^[2][3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French aire, inherited from Latin ārea (“threshing floor, courtyard”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Besides its basic sense of level, open ground, the Latin word meant a building plot, a basin, a burial ground and, abstractly, a surface area;^[3] it had the senses “garden bed” and “threshing floor” from Cato and the geometrical sense from Vitruvius.^[2] The learned are is its doublet.^[1] Cognate with Italian aia, Spanish era, Catalan era and Old Occitan eira.^[4][3]

The sense “eyrie” and the masculine gender of the Old French word are disputed.^[2][3] Bloch and Wartburg keep a single word: the Latin word already meant a bird's nesting place in Plautus, and French narrowed it to the eyrie of birds of prey, above all the eagle;^[4] “nest” easily led to “brood”, then to “race, stock”.^[4] They explain the masculine by a meeting, in northern France, of the two Latin words, the second being ager (“field”), which gave Old Occitan aire and agre “nest” and “family, descent”;^[4] the FEW too files the word under the first etymon.^[2][5] The TLFi, following the REW, instead takes the senses “eyrie”, “stock” and “kind” from the second through a semi-learned sound development, since the Old Occitan word, recorded in Arnaut Daniel for a bird's nest and in the Breviari d'amor for a family, cannot go back to the first; it adds that either way the two Latin words must have interfered, as the hesitation between masculine and feminine shows.^[2][6] Rey likewise derives the eyrie sense from the Latin word for a field or landed estate, the word being drawn towards “open space where the eagle nests” by the threshing-floor word; the sense of family origin came either from the image of the nest or from the field as a family's land.^[3] Wiktionary derives the eyrie sense probably from the field word.^[1]

The compound débonnaire (about 1080, in the Chanson de Roland) goes back to de bon aire (“of good stock”), opposed to de put aire and de mal aire.^[4] Rey says these phrases disappeared before classical French because of the clash with phrases built on air¹, leaving the compound as their only modern trace.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is of the eagle's eyrie: in 1086 haire is a rock face where the eagle builds its nest, in the Domesday Book, and Wace uses it so in 1155.^[2][3] About 1100 the Chanson de Roland has malvais hom de put aire, a man “of a vile kind”.^[2] From the Latin area come the mid-12th-century senses “garden bed” (Cambridge Psalter) and, about 1160–70, the open floor of a hall in Wace's Roman de Rou.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

In Old and Middle French the word had many more uses than now: a place in general (about 1200), a courtyard, fallow land (1321), and the floor of a room (13th century), used for reckoning built surfaces (1227).^[3] Phrases such as en mi l'aire “in the middle of the floor” probably died out because they sounded like en l'air.^[3] The sense “garden bed” (about 1120) has gone except in regional use, but “threshing floor”, recorded from about 1170 (the TLFi's first example dates from the end of the 12th century), stayed current until the second half of the 20th century.^[3][2][8] The floor sense lives on in technical uses: aire d'un plancher (1409), aire d'un bassin (1751), and the flat face of an anvil (1838).^[3]

The geometrical sense, the surface of a figure, dates from the 13th century, and in navigation aire de vent (1394, are de vent) is a sector between two points of the compass, a rhumb.^[3][2] Aire continentale appeared in geology in 1900 and aviation took up “flat open surface” in 1890, as in aire d'atterrissage;^[3] aire de lancement dates from about 1970.^[3] Road and town planning gave aire de jeu (1966), aire de stationnement (1974) and aire de repos; under the influence of English area the word also came to stand for “zone”, as in aire culturelle and in anatomy, embryology and physics, all from the mid-20th century.^[3]

The eyrie sense passed to “origin, stock” in the early 13th century (ere in the Perceval continuation) and to “sort, kind”;^[2][3] de bonne aire is feminine in 1342.^[2][3] The English aerie (1580s) is from Old French aire “nest” and Medieval Latin area “nest of a bird of prey”.^[9]

Timeline

• 1086 – Haire “eagle's eyrie” in the Domesday Book.^[2][3]
• c. 1100 – De put aire “of a vile kind” in the Chanson de Roland.^[2]
• mid-12th century – Used for a garden bed in the Cambridge Psalter.^[2]
• 1155 – Wace uses it for the eagle's nest in the Brut.^[2]
• 1160–1170 – The open floor of a hall, in Wace's Roman de Rou.^[2][7]
• c. 1170 – First record of the threshing floor sense.^[3][8]
• early 13th century – Used for a family's origin.^[2][3]
• 13th century – The geometrical sense appears.^[2][3]
• 1342 – De bonne aire is recorded with feminine gender.^[2][3]
• 1394 – Are de vent in navigation.^[3]
• 1890 – First used in aviation.^[3]
• 1966 – Aire de jeu is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated) A hard, level surface on which grain was threshed, a threshing floor.^[2][10][11]
2. A flat rock surface where birds of prey nest, and by extension the nest itself, an eyrie: l'aire d'un aigle.^[2][10][11]
3. Any flat surface; in building, the base or bottom of a floor or basin.^[10][2]
4. A piece of ground set aside for a purpose: aire de jeux, aire d'atterrissage, aire de lancement;^[10][11] aire de repos, a rest area beside a motorway.^[10][11]
5. (geometry) The area of a figure, the measure of a bounded surface.^[10][7]
6. A domain or zone over which something extends: aire culturelle.^[11][3]
7. (navigation) Aire de vent: a rhumb, a direction of the compass.^[3][1]

Word family

• airée
• airer
• débonnaire

Related words

• airial
• are
• Latin ārea
• Latin ager
• English aerie

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b c d e f Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
5. ^ a b Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 25, 161a
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b c d e f Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ a b c d e Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)