seno

seno¹ breast, bosom; bay

Etymology tree of seno¹

inherited borrowed derived

Latin sinus

French sein

Italian seno

English sine

English sinus

From the same root · seno¹

Latin īnsinuō ← sinus

Latin sinuō ← sinus

Latin sinuōsus ← sinus

English cosine ← sine

Pronunciation

• /ˈse.no/^[1]

Forms

seno m (plural seni)^[1] Old forms are Old Italian sino and Old Italian sinu.^[2]

Etymology

The word for the breast is inherited from Latin sinus (“fold of a garment; bosom; bay”), properly the hollow fold of the garment in which women carried their small children, and so “breast”, “cavity”, “inlet”.^[3][4][5][6] The plural in the sense “breasts” follows French seins (16th century).^[3][7][2] The Latin word is continued throughout Romance: French sein, Occitan sin, Catalan sin, Spanish seno, Portuguese seio, Sardinian sinu, Romanian sân.^[4][8][9][1] DEI notes that it is rare in the Italian dialects.^[10]

The origin of the Latin word is uncertain, and Nocentini finds no comparisons.^[3][4] De Vaan thinks it is probably connected with Albanian gji (“breast”), from a Proto-Albanian stem in *sin-, and rejects a link with Sanskrit because that word lacks the vowel /i/.^[11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Giacomo da Lentini, before 1250, in the figurative sense of the depths of one's conscience.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Dante (before 1313–1319) used the word for a bay, a part of the sea reaching into the land, and Simintendi (before 1333) for a fold of a garment.^[3] Boccaccio (1353) has it for the chest, especially a woman's, and for the space under the garment that covers it, and in the 14th century it also meant the womb.^[3] Anatomy took it for a cavity of the body in 1844.^[3]

The plural seni “breasts” was condemned by Panzini in 1923 as a word in fashion among novelists, introduced by Guido da Verona, though Carducci already wrote i nudi seni in 1880.^[3] Manzoni's lake of Como is tutto a seni e a golfi (“all bays and gulfs”).^[13] The Hail Mary's benedetto il frutto del seno tuo renders Latin fructus ventris tui.^[14] Southern dialects made words for an apron from it, Neapolitan senale and Sicilian mantasinu, and Tommaseo records senata “as much as the bosom holds” (1841).^[8][15]

Timeline

• Before 1250 – Giacomo da Lentini uses seno for the depths of the conscience.^[3]
• Before 1313–1319 – Dante uses seno for a bay.^[3]
• Before 1333 – Simintendi uses it for a fold of a garment.^[3]
• 1353 – Boccaccio uses seno for the breast.^[3]
• 1844 – The anatomical sense “cavity” is recorded.^[3]
• 1880 – Carducci writes i nudi seni “the naked breasts”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) The cleavage: the vertical groove between a woman's breasts.^[16][14][7]
2. The bosom or chest, especially a woman's: Teneva la lettera stretta al seno.^[16][6][17]
3. A breast, or a woman's breasts collectively: allattare al seno, to breastfeed.^[16][7][6]
4. (euphemistic) The womb: portare un figlio in seno.^[16][6][17]
5. The space between the chest and the clothing over it: Si infilò la busta in seno.^[16][6][13]
6. (figurative) The heart, the innermost part of the mind; the inside of something: in seno a, within (a group or body).^[16][6][17]
7. A cavity or hollow.^[16]
8. (literary) A bay or inlet of sea or lake.^[17][13][1]
9. (anatomy) A sinus: i seni paranasali.^[6][1]

Word family

• insenatura
• senata
• insenarsi
• reggiseno
• senologia

seno² sine

Etymology tree of seno²

inherited borrowed derived

Latin sinus

French sein

Italian seno

English sine

English sinus

From the same root · seno²

Latin īnsinuō ← sinus

Latin sinuō ← sinus

Latin sinuōsus ← sinus

English cosine ← sine

Pronunciation

• /ˈse.no/^[1]

Forms

seno m (plural seni)^[1]

Etymology

The word for the sine is borrowed from Medieval Latin sinus, the Latin word for “fold, bosom” used as a calque of Arabic جَيْب (jayb, “opening of a garment; bosom; pocket”).^{[3][4][16][6]} The Arabic word had the mathematical sense through a misreading: it stood for a Sanskrit word for the chord of an arc, Sanskrit ज्या (jyā, “bowstring”), and Latin translators rendered it by its everyday meaning.^{[4][5][10][1]} Wiktionary credits the Latin sense to Gherardo of Cremona in the 12th century.^[1] The same Medieval Latin word gave French sinus and Spanish seno.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Leon Battista Alberti (1435–1436), for the trigonometric function;^[3][10] DEI dates the word to the 16th century, in Biringuccio.^[3][10]

Semantic evolution

The sine was first defined on the circle, as the perpendicular drawn from one end of an arc to the radius through the other end, and an older name was seno retto; the old form sino has fallen out of use.^[10][2] Coseno (18th century) comes from New Latin cosinus, short for complementi sinus “sine of the complement”, and sinusoide (1895) from Latin sinus with the suffix -oide.^[4]

Timeline

• 1435–1436 – Leon Battista Alberti uses seno for the trigonometric function.^[3]
• 16th century – Biringuccio uses the word.^[10]
• 18th century – Coseno is recorded.^[4]
• 1895 – Sinusoide is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (mathematics) The sine: the trigonometric function that gives, in a right triangle, the ratio of the side opposite an angle to the hypotenuse (symbol sen or sin): seno iperbolico, hyperbolic sine.^[16][7][6]

Word family

• coseno
• sinusoide
• sinusoidale