aestas

Forms

aestās f (genitive aestātis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *aissāt-, inherited from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eidʰ-teh₂t- (“burning, heat”), from the root *h₂eydʰ- (“to burn”) of aedēs.^[2][3] Most handbooks take its ⟨-st-⟩ as the regular outcome of /dʰt/, but de Vaan doubts it, since dental clusters usually gave /ss/; he prefers regular ⟨*aissāt-⟩ beside ⟨*aissu-⟩ (aestus), with the suffixes ⟨-tāt-⟩ and ⟨-tu-⟩ restored.^[2] Hill derived the nouns from a reduplicated present, which de Vaan rejects.^[2] Cognates of the root are Ancient Greek αἴθω (aíthō, “to burn”), Old Irish áed (“fire”) and Old English ād (“pyre”).^[2] Varro derived the word from ⟨aestus⟩ “heat”, and Isidore explained it as if from ⟨usta⟩ “burnt”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus, Mostellaria: someone has heard that the house has very good shade in summer (umbram aestāte … perbonam).^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Aestās is the warm part of the year, and one of the seasons: Ennius has aestātem autumnus sequitur, “autumn follows summer”.^[3] As the season for war it is the campaigning season (Sisenna, Caesar).^[3] By extension it is the heat of summer (Horace's Faunus keeps the fiery summer from his goats), in Virgil the clear summer air through which bees “swim”, and, counting time, a year.^[3] Church Latin glosses it simply “summer”.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of shade in summer.^[3][6]
• 204–169 BC – Ennius names it among the seasons.^[3][6]
• 120–67 BC – Sisenna of a campaigning season.^[3][6]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil counts years in summers.^[3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. summer.^[3][1][5]
2. A campaigning season.^[3]
3. Summer heat, summer weather;^[3] (poetic) the summer air.^[3]
4. (poetic) A year.^[3]

Word family

• aestīvus
• aestīvō

Related words

• aedēs
• aestus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de