avena

Forms

avēna f (genitive avēnae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is probably a word from a non-Indo-European substrate.^[2][1] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *aweksnā-.^[2] Cognate with Old Prussian wyse (“oats”), Lithuanian avižà (“oats”), Latvian àuzas (“oats”) and Serbo-Croatian òvas (“oats”), from Proto-Slavic *ovьsъ.^[2][1] The suffix is odd, since Baltic and Slavic do not share it and in Latin it would be expected to give ⟨-īna⟩, not ⟨-ēna⟩; de Vaan rejects Walde and Hofmann's idea that ⟨*avīna⟩ was remade after harēna (“sand”).^[2] Older scholars connected it with aveō or with ovis (“sheep”).^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler date it from Ennius,^[2][5] who writes of picking out and removing oats and darnel growing among the wheat.^[6]

Semantic evolution

It is the oat, probably together with related grasses,^[6] both cultivated oats and wild oats, a weed in the grain, as in Cato and Cicero.^[3] Virgil has a crop of oats that burns up the field, and Columella and Horace use it too.^[6][3] It is also a stalk, as Pliny the Elder of the slender stalk of flax, or a drinking straw.^[6] From a hollow stalk it becomes a shepherd's pipe: Virgil's first Eclogue opens with a woodland Muse practised on a slender reed, and Ovid has the plural for the pan pipes.^[6][1] The grammarians distinguished avēnae, a barren growth, from habēnae, reins.^[4]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius of oats among the wheat.^[6][2][5]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of wild oats.^[3]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of oats and of the shepherd's pipe.^[6]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of pan pipes.^[6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of the stalk of flax.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The oat, oats; wild oats.^[6][3][1]
2. A stalk, straw; a drinking straw.^[6][1]
3. (poetic) A shepherd's pipe made of a stalk;^[6][1] (plural) pan pipes.^[6][1]

Word family

• avēnāceus
• avēnārius

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press