cheminée

Forms

cheminée f (plural cheminées)^[1] Old French keminee (Picard and Norman) and ceminee.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French cheminee, inherited from Late Latin camīnāta (“(room) provided with a fireplace”), short for a phrase with camera (“room”) (584), which came to mean the fireplace itself by the 9th century.^[4][2][5][6] The Late Latin word is the feminine past participle of camīnō (“to build like a furnace”), from Latin camīnus (“furnace, hearth”), which was borrowed from Ancient Greek κάμινος (káminos, “oven, furnace”), a word of unknown origin still alive in Modern Greek.^[4][2][7]

The simple Latin noun disappeared in French because it sounded the same as Late Latin camminus (“road”), the source of chemin, and that word, by popular etymology, probably also helped to keep the unstressed ⟨i⟩ of the French word.^[4][2][7] Wiktionary stresses that the word is not derived from that word or from cheminer, though their influence is possible.^[1] The simple word survives in Italian camino (“chimney”) and Old Occitan camin (“furnace”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

About 1160 keminee in Floire et Blancheflor names the chimney stack rising above a roof, in a tower roonde come keminée “round like a chimney”.^[2][3] About 1170 Chrétien de Troyes uses it in Cligès for a room with a fireplace.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The old sense of a room with a fireplace was still found in the 18th century, but already by the end of the 12th century the word had narrowed to its modern meaning, the whole fireplace or one of its parts: the hearth, the frame of the hearth, or the stack that carries the smoke out above the roof.^[4][2] A ceminee de marbre is recorded in the second half of the 12th century.^[2] A 14th-century proverb names three things that drive a good man from his house: a roofless house, a smoking chimney and a quarrelsome wife.^[3]

From the stack came the names of other flues: the funnel of a steamboat (1832) and a factory chimney (1857, Flaubert).^[2][4] By likeness of shape it named the vent of a volcano (1649, Scarron), a pipe of an organ (1690), the glass of a lamp (1829), a mine's ventilation shaft (1866) and, in mountaineering, a narrow vertical gully; the TLFi dates this last sense to 1890,^[2] the Quemada datings to 1868.^[8][4] Spanish chimenea was borrowed from the French word.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1160 – Keminee, the chimney stack, in Floire et Blancheflor.^[2]
• c. 1170 – A room with a fireplace, in Chrétien de Troyes' Cligès.^[2]
• Late 12th century – The fireplace itself, in Guillaume de Berneville's Saint Gilles.^[2]
• 1649 – Scarron uses it of a volcano.^[2][4]
• 1690 – Furetière records it for a part of an organ.^[2][4]
• 1829 – The glass chimney of a lamp, in Boiste.^[2][4]
• 1832 – The funnel of a steamboat.^[2][4]
• 1857 – A factory chimney, in Madame Bovary.^[2]
• 1866 – Cheminée d'aérage in mining.^[2]
• 1868 – The mountaineering sense, in the Annuaire du Club alpin suisse.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fireplace: a structure with a hearth for a fire and a flue that carries off the smoke.^[9][10][2]
2. The frame or mantelpiece around the hearth: une cheminée de marbre.^[9][3]
3. A chimney stack above the roof, also the funnel of a ship or the chimney of a factory.^[9][2]
4. (geology) The vent of a volcano.^[9][2][1]
5. (mountaineering) A narrow vertical gully in rock.^[9][2]
6. A vertical shaft or vent: une cheminée d'aération.^[9][1]
7. The glass tube of an oil lamp.^[2][1]

Related words

• Latin camīnus
• Ancient Greek κάμινος (káminos)

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 Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 138b
7. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
8. ^ a b Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
9. ^ a b c d e f Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)
10. ^ Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert