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aventure

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Etymology and origin of the Old French word aventure

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1085–1100 Rashi's French glosses More words from the 11th century
Inherited from
Latin *adventura
Ultimate origin
Latin veniō
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Old French aventure
English adventure
From the same root
English adventurer ← aventure

Forms

aventure f (oblique plural aventures)[1]

Chrétien de Troyes's manuscripts write avanture and aventure;[2] the spelling adventure, with a Latin ⟨d⟩, is frequent in Middle French.[3][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *adventūra (“what is going to happen”).[1][6][7][8] The Latin form is the neuter plural, made a feminine noun, of Latin adventūrus, the future participle of adveniō (“to arrive; to happen”),[1][8] which is formed from ad- (“to”) and veniō (“to come”).[9] Its Romance cognates include Italian avventura, Old Occitan aventura and Spanish aventura.[10]

Medieval Latin adventūra, recorded from the 13th century, was taken back from Romance.[1] The verb aventurer is derived from the noun.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DEAF's earliest record is Rashi's French glosses, of the end of the 11th century,[11][12] and the hand-lemmatised corpora have it in the Vie de saint Alexis, about 1090.[13][14] The DHLF dates the first record to 1050, with the sense “fate, destiny”, close to that of avenir.[15]

Semantic evolution

Gamillscheg gives “happening” as the first sense, with bone aventure “welfare, good luck”, and the sense “adventure” already in the 12th century; the old sense survives in modern à l'aventure “at random”.[7] The DHLF sets “chance” in the early 12th century and “danger” in phrases such as se mettre en aventure, and dates the knightly adventure to the Lais of Marie de France in the second half of the 12th century.[15] In Chrétien de Troyes it is often fortune that leads the hero: Tant qu'aventure a la fontainne Desoz le pin les amena “until chance led them to the spring beneath the pine”.[2] In feudal law the plural named casual revenues, such as fines and escheats, as opposed to fixed rents.[16][17]

À l'aventure replaced en aventure in 1306, and la bonne aventure of fortune-telling dates from the 15th century.[15] The word lives on as French aventure.[1] Its knightly sense spread through Europe: Middle High German âventiure, the source of German Abenteuer, came from French,[8][1] and English took adventure about 1200.[9]

Timeline

  • 1085–1100 – Rashi's French glosses.[11][12]
  • c. 1090 – aventure in the Vie de saint Alexis.[13][14]
  • late 11th century – the Laws of William the Conqueror.[18]
  • 1120–1140 – the first record in the AND.[4]
  • c. 1170 – avanture in Chrétien's Erec et Enide.[2][19]
  • 1288 – the plural for casual feudal revenues.[16]
  • 1306 – à l'aventure.[15]

Meanings

Noun

  1. fortune, fate, destiny.[2][4]
  2. an event, happening, occurrence.[4][18]
  3. chance, hazard;[18][20][4] par aventure by chance, perhaps.[18][20][4]
  4. an adventure, a knight's exploit or feat.[4][20]
  5. risk, danger;[21][4] en aventure at risk.[21][4]
  6. misfortune, accident, misadventure.[4]
  7. a marvel, wonder.[4]
  8. (feudal law) a casual revenue (fines, escheats), as opposed to fixed dues.[16][18]
  9. fortune-telling.[21]

Anglo-Norman

The AND first cites the word from 1120–1140 and lists the spellings adventure, aveinture, aventour, aventur and avienture.[4] It records many set phrases: par aventure “by chance; perhaps”, en aventure “at risk”, sanz aventure “without risk” and aler en aventure “to seek one's fortune”, and a legal sense “legal case, event”.[4] Middle English aventure comes from the Old French word, with Medieval Latin adventūra beside it.[22]

Word family

  • aventurer

Descendants

  • French aventure[1]
  • Middle Dutch aventure (borrowed)[1]
  • Middle English aventure (borrowed)[1]
  • Middle High German âventiure (borrowed; → German Abenteuer)[1]
  • Middle Irish amhantur (borrowed)[1]
  • Middle Low German êventü̂re (borrowed)[1]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch, the AND, the DÉCT and Godefroy head the word aventure;[21][4][2][16] Foerster's Chrétien glossary has avanture.[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. aventure
  3. ^ a b FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. aventure
  5. ^ ATILF (2017), LGeRM: lexique morphologique du moyen français, version 2.0.0, Nancy: ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, ORTOLANG (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 FR), p. s.v. aventure
  6. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 24:194
  7. ^ a b c Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 73
  8. ^ a b c Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 88
  9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  10. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh, p. 290
  11. ^ a b Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. aventure
  12. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. RaschiD2
  13. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas (2025), Old Gallo-Romance Corpus, github (the earliest Gallo-Romance texts, lemmatised; texts by siglum), p. AlexisZ
  14. ^ a b UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. AlexisZ
  15. ^ a b c d Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. aventure
  16. ^ a b c d Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 1:518
  17. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. adventura
  18. ^ a b c d e Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. aventure
  19. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. ErecF
  20. ^ a b c d Foerster, Wendelin; Breuer, Hermann (1914), Kristian von Troyes: Wörterbuch zu seinen sämtlichen Werken, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 61
  21. ^ a b c d Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 1:720
  22. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Aventure.” Etymologically, 13 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/fro/aventure. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

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