Etymologically
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avena

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [aˈweː.na][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [aˈvɛː.na][1]

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