sinestro

Forms

sinestro (feminine sinestra, masculine plural sinestri, feminine plural sinestre)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin sinextrum, sinister (“left”), with the vowel of dexter (“right”).^[1][2][3] The same form gave Old French senestre and Spanish siniestro, and the dialects have Bolognese snéster and Friulian signéstri.^[2][3][4] sinistro is the learned doublet, taken again from Latin.^[5][1]

Migliorini counted this pair of doublets among the words in which the 14th century replaced the Tuscan sound shape by the Latin one, until the Latin form won.^[5]

Nocentini derives Latin sinister from the base of senex (“old”) with a contrastive suffix, as the weaker, “old” hand set against dexter.^[4] DEI connects it with sine (“without”), as “the one that differs from the right”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record of sinestro is in Guittone d'Arezzo, before 1294, in the sense “unfavourable, adverse”.^[5] DEI puts the form in the 13th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Petrarch uses sinestra for the left hand, and Pulci writes of Rinaldo kneeling sul lato sinestro, on his left side.^[2] DEI gives Petrarch's senèstro as a 14th-century variant.^[3] The noun senestro “misfortune” is in Francesco da Barberino in 1314.^[5] The form is now obsolete in the standard language, but it lives on in some northern dialects.^[2][1][6]

Timeline

• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses sinestro “adverse”.^[5]
• 1314 – Francesco da Barberino uses the noun senestro “misfortune”.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (archaic, Northern Italy) left, on the left side; a variant of sinistro.^[6][1][2]
2. (archaic) unfavourable, ominous.^[1][5]

Related words

• sinistro
• sinistra
• destro
• Latin sinister

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
3. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975)
4. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET