fournaise

Forms

fournaise f (plural fournaises)^[1] Old French fornaise, forneise, beside the rarer masculine fornais, fornaiz.^[2][3][4][5] The spelling fournaise appears in the 16th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French fornaise, a remaking with a feminine ending of Old French fornais, inherited from Latin fornāx (“oven, kiln”).^[2][6][1][7] The Old French masculine is poorly attested; the TLFi thinks it was probably feminine, like the Latin word and most of its Romance outcomes, while Bloch and Wartburg call it masculine but of hesitating gender.^[2][6] The Latin word is related to furnus (“oven”), of which the Robert dictionaries call it an augmentative.^[8][9][4]

Cognate with Italian fornace, Spanish hornaza and Old Occitan fornaiz.^[6][4] French four and fourneau come from the same Latin family.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded about 1121 in the Voyage of Saint Brendan (Cume buche de fornaise), meaning a large oven with a fierce fire.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The first sense, a large oven or furnace, has gone out of use.^[5][9] By metonymy the word was used for the fire of hell (about 1190, Marie de France) and for any blazing hearth, as in la fournaise du mont Etna (1654).^[5][3][2]

By analogy it came to mean a very hot place (1823) and, as a metaphor, a centre of intense activity (about 1830, Hugo), a development Rey compares with that of ébullition.^[5][2] The GLLF dates the sense “battlefield, scene of fierce fighting” to Hugo in 1853.^[3] In Canada, under the influence of the English word, it names a central-heating boiler (19th century), a use the Petit Robert marks as criticized.^[9][10]

The Old French word had already passed into English as furnace (early 13th century).^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1121 – Fornaise appears in the Voyage of Saint Brendan.^[2][5]
• 1155 – Wace uses the form fornaiz.^[5][3]
• c. 1190 – Marie de France uses it for the fire of hell.^[5][3]
• Early 13th century – English borrows it as furnace.^[11]
• 16th century – The spelling fournaise appears.^[3]
• 1654 – D'Ablancourt writes of la fournaise du mont Etna.^[2][5]
• 1823 – Las Cases uses it for a place of intense heat.^[2]
• 1831 – Hugo uses it for a centre of intellectual activity.^[2][3]
• 1853 – Hugo uses it for a battlefield.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated) A large furnace in which a fierce fire burns.^[9][12][2]
2. A violent blaze or conflagration.^[10][1]
3. A very hot or overheated place: En juillet, le grenier devient une fournaise.^[9][10][12]
4. (literary) A place of fierce fighting, the heart of a battle.^[9][10][3]
5. (figurative) A centre of intense intellectual activity.^[3][2]
6. (Canada) A home heating boiler.^[9][10]

Related words

• fourneau
• four
• Latin fornāx
• English furnace

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
4. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 3, 725a
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ a b c d e Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ a b Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)