montaigne

Forms

montaigne f (oblique plural montaignes)^[1]

• muntaigne, muntaine, montaingne, monteigne, montainne, mountaine^[1][2][3][4]

The Roland has muntaigne, the usual insular spelling;^[5][2] Chrétien de Troyes writes montaigne and montaingne,^[3] and montene occurs in Floovant.^[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *montānea (“mountainous region”),^[6][7][8] the feminine, used as a noun, of a Late Latin adjective montāneus, a variant of montānus (“of the mountains”).^[9][10] Wiktionary gives the Early Medieval Latin form as montānia, a collective built on mōns (“mountain”),^[1] and Gamillscheg thinks it was formed after the model of campānia.^[11] The DÉRom reconstructs a Proto-Romance noun meaning both a mountainous region and a single mountain, a collective or topographic derivative of the word for "mountain".^[12] The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *monti- and to Proto-Indo-European *mon-ti- (“protrusion, height”).^[13]

Its Romance cognates include Italian montagna, Spanish montaña, Portuguese montanha and Old Occitan montanha.^[8] Gamillscheg notes that by its formation it meant "mountain range", and that it took the place of mont, which was dying out.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Chanson de Roland, about 1100, in an Anglo-Norman manuscript of about 1125.^[14][15] There it already has both the senses the TLFi gives for that text: a single high elevation of land, and in the plural or with the article, the mountains as a region of high ground.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

Chrétien de Troyes uses it for mountains crossed on a journey, such as un grant val entre .ii. montaingnes "a great valley between two mountains", and in names of lordships such as la Haute Montaigne.^[3] The FEW finds the word throughout France except in part of the Pas-de-Calais, where the simple mont partly survives.^[6]

The later senses are modern: "heap, pile" from 1644, the Alpine pasture from 1761, the left-wing benches of the Convention, la Montagne, from 1792, and montagnes russes from 1816.^[9] The modern word is French montagne.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1100 – muntaigne in the Chanson de Roland, whose Oxford manuscript is Anglo-Norman of about 1125.^[14][15][16]
• 1100–1125 – in Benedeit's Voyage de saint Brendan.^[14]
• 1121–1125 – muntaine in the first Anglo-Norman text the AND cites.^[2]
• c. 1170 – montaingnes in Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide.^[3][17]
• 1185–1200 – montenes and montaigne in Floovant.^[18]
• 1644 – the figurative sense "heap".^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. a mountain, a high elevation of land; also a hill.^[3][2][19]
2. (chiefly plural) mountainous country, a mountain range.^[9][2]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the word muntaine, first cites it from 1121–1125, and lists spellings from montaigne and muntaigne to mountayne and mounteyne.^[2] It records the word for a volcano and for the Black Mountain of Antioch, a range west of the city and a centre of monasteries.^[2] Middle English borrowed it as mountayne, the source of the English word mountain.^[1]

Descendants

• Middle French montaigne (→ French montagne)^[1]
• Norman montangne^[1]
• Walloon montinne^[1]
• Middle English mountayne (borrowed)^[1]

Related words

• mont

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch and the DÉCT head the word montaigne, the AND muntaine and the DMF montagne.^{[19][3][2][20]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. muntaine
3. ^ 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. montaigne
4. ^ 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
5. ^ 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. RolS
6. ^ a b c Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 6/3:100
7. ^ Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 456
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5666
9. ^ a b c d e f 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
10. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. montagne
11. ^ a b Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 665
12. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. mons
14. ^ a b c 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. montaigne
15. ^ a b Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
16. ^ Rainsford, Thomas, CorMétAF: lemmatised extracts of Old and Middle French verse and prose (990–1500), github (texts by siglum), p. RolMoign
17. ^ 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
18. ^ Camps, Jean-Baptiste, et al., Geste: a lemmatised corpus of Old French chansons de geste, github (texts by DEAF siglum), p. FloovG
19. ^ a b Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 6:221
20. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. montagne