alenare

Forms

alenare (first-person singular present aléno, first-person singular past historic alenài, past participle alenàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Medieval Latin alēnāre, recorded from the 10th century in the Antidotarium, a form of Latin anhēlāre (“to pant, breathe”) with the consonants transposed.^[2][1][3][4] The LEI and Körting attribute the metathesis to the influence of the synonym hālāre (“to breathe”).^[5][6]

The same word is Old French alener, French halener, Old Occitan alenar, Catalan alenar and Logudorese alenare.^[5][7][6] From the verb came the back-formation lena “breath”, later “vigour”.^[5][6] The Latin verb also entered Italian as a learned word, anelare, a doublet of the inherited verb.^[5][1] The Latin verb is formed from anhēlus (“panting”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a moralised bestiary of the 13th century from the area of Arezzo and Città di Castello, where the panther breathes out a scent that draws every beast to it: alenando tale odore rende.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb meant simply “to breathe”, and as a noun “breath”: Zucchero's Santà (1310) speaks of vomiting that makes one breathe with distress.^[8] Aldobrandino's health treatise uses it of air that is unpleasant to breathe and of bad breath.^[9][2]

The form alenare lasted in literature until Redi (1698), and D'Annunzio revived it in the 1880s for breathing hard: Alenava però.^[5][3] Dialects kept it for breathing with effort: Ligurian arenà in Ventimiglia, Neapolitan allənà and Sicilian allinari (“to pant”).^[5] Because lena meant both “breath” and “vigour”, the 16th century added a sense “to strengthen” to the full form allenare.^[5]

Timeline

• 10th century – Medieval Latin alenare appears in the Antidotarium.^[5]
• 13th century – A Tuscan moralised bestiary has alenando.^[8]
• 1310 – Zucchero's Santà uses allenare “to breathe”.^[8][5]
• 1698 – Redi uses alenare.^[5]
• 1882 – D'Annunzio uses it for laboured breathing.^[5][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary) To pant, breathe with difficulty; to anelare.^{[10][11][3][1]}
2. (archaic) To long for something.^[1][12]

Word family

• alenante

Related words

• lena
• anelare
• allenare
• Latin anhēlō

Usage notes

GRADIT and Zingarelli treat it as an obsolete variant of anelare.^[12][13] The present participle alenante is also an adjective, “breathless”.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it
3. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 2, 1270
6. ^ a b c Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
9. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
12. ^ a b De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
13. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli