seine

Forms

seine f (plural seines)^[1] Also spelled senne.^[2][3][4] Old French saïne, saime, later sayne and seine.^[2][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French saïne, inherited from Latin sagēna (“seine, fishing net”), which Latin took in the 1st century from Ancient Greek σαγήνη (sagḗnē, “seine, large fishing net”).^[2][5][4][1] Old French also had a masculine sain “bond” and “net”, which went out of use, partly because it sounded the same as sein.^[5]

Cognate with Walloon saymm and with dialect forms of northern Italy.^[6][7] The Old French word helped shape the English word seine, which goes back to Old English segne.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as saïne in the poem De David li prophecie at the end of the 12th century, in a manuscript copied in the early 14th, already naming a fishing net;^[2][5] Rey calls this an isolated record.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

As a technical word of fishing it has kept the sense of its Latin source, a large net drawn through the water or along the bottom.^[5][2] In Anglo-Norman it also named the catch taken with such a net.^[9] The modern spellings are fairly late: Rey dates seine to 1693 and senne to 1765,^[5] while the TLFi finds seine in 1452 and senne in 1721.^[2]

It gave the verb seiner or senner “to fish with a seine” (1716).^[2][5] From it came senneur or seineur, a boat or fisherman using a seine (1844, 1872).^[2]

Timeline

• late 12th century – Saïne appears in De David li prophecie.^[2]
• c. 1260 – The form saime is used in Étienne Boileau's Livre des métiers.^[2][6]
• 1452 – The spelling seine appears in Arnoul Gréban's Mystère de la Passion.^[2]
• 1716 – First record of the verb senner.^[2]
• 1721 – The Dictionnaire de Trévoux has the spelling senne.^[2]
• 1844 – Bateau seineur, a boat fishing with a seine.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (fishing) A seine, a large fishing net laid out in a curve or dragged over the bottom or along the shore.^[3][2][6]

Word family

• seiner
• senneur

Related words

• Latin sagēna

References

1. ^ a b c 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 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 Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)