colon

Forms

colon m (plural colons)^[1] Old French colone;^[2][3][4] Middle French coulon.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin colōnus (“farmer, tenant, inhabitant of a colony”),^{[2][5][6][1][7]} from colō (“to cultivate”).^[5][6][3] In Medieval Latin the word was much used for the tenant of a piece of land.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found about 1310 as colone, in the French translation of Amatus of Montecassino's Ystoire de li Normant, meaning the tenant or inhabitant of a piece of land.^[2][4][5]

Semantic evolution

The sense “tenant of a piece of land”, taken from Medieval Latin, lasted until the 17th century and survives in law: colon partiaire (1748, Montesquieu), a calque of Latin colonus partiarius, is a sharecropper.^[5][2] In history it names the free peasant bound to the soil in the late Roman Empire.^[8][9]

From about 1355, in Bersuire's Livy, coulon meant a member of an ancient colony, the inhabitant of a new town founded by Rome or a Greek city.^[2][5] At the Renaissance the sense was carried over to the present.^[5] From 1663 colon meant a settler of a modern colonie.^[2][5] It later followed other senses of colonie, for a child at a holiday camp (1911) or an inmate of a penal colony.^[5][9] In Canada it is also a familiar and pejorative word for a boor.^[8][1]

Timeline

• c. 1310 – Colone “tenant, inhabitant of a piece of land” in the Ystoire de li Normant.^[2]
• c. 1355 – Bersuire uses coulon for a member of an ancient colony.^[2][5][3]
• 1663 – First used of a settler in a modern colony.^[2][5]
• 1689 – Domat uses it in law for a tenant farmer.^[2]
• 1748 – Montesquieu writes colon partiaire.^[2][5]
• 1800 – The derivative colonage is recorded.^[2][5]
• 1911 – It is applied to a child at a holiday camp.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A colonist, settler: a person who has gone to live in and exploit a colony; an inhabitant of a colony from the mother country, as in Les premiers colons ont défriché la vallée.^[8][9][1]
2. (law) A farmer who pays the rent of his land in kind: colon partiaire, a sharecropper.^[8][9][1]
3. (history) In the late Roman Empire, a free peasant bound to the land he worked.^[8][9]
4. A child at a holiday camp (colonie de vacances); an inmate of a penal colony.^[9][1]
5. (Canada, familiar, pejorative) A boor, a hick.^[8][1]

Word family

• colonage
• colonat

Related words

• colonie
• coloniser
• colonial
• Latin colōnus

Usage notes

A separate colon, a familiar clipping of colonel recorded from 1890, is used in military slang and in exclamations such as mon colon !.^[6][8][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 921a
8. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c d e f g Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)