Etymologically
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avia

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈa.wi.a][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈaː.vi.a][1]

Forms

avia f (genitive aviae); first declension[1] Inscriptions have popular forms such as abiae (dative), havia and aia.[2] Late Latin also has ava.[3][2]

Etymology

It is from Latin avus (“grandfather”), with a feminine suffix.[4][2][1] Leumann regarded it as a fairly old feminine of avus, but de Vaan notes that it may also be the feminine of a Proto-Italic *awjo- (“grandson, uncle”) such as Baltic, Slavic and Irish have.[5] He traces avus to *awo- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂euh₂- (“grandfather on the mother's side”), perhaps also grandmother.[5] Cognate with Hittite huhha- (“grandfather”), Old Irish aue (“grandson”), Lithuanian avýnas (“maternal uncle”) and Old Norse ǽ (“great-grandfather”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler date it from Plautus,[5][6] whose Truculentus has a baby with “two mothers and two grandmothers”.[4][3]

Semantic evolution

It means a grandmother, on the father's or the mother's side; the jurists of the Digest specify both.[3] Persius uses the plural for old wives' tales or rooted prejudices: “I pluck the old grandmothers out of your lungs”.[4] The Vulgate uses it in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and the late form ava appears in Venantius Fortunatus.[3] Church Latin keeps the sense grandmother, and the form ava survives in northern Italian dialects.[7][2]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a child's two grandmothers.[4][5][6]
  • 34–62 AD – Persius of old wives' tales.[4][6]
  • 390–406 AD – The Vulgate uses it in the Second Epistle to Timothy.[3][6]
  • 533 AD – The Digest of grandmothers on both sides.[3][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A grandmother.[4][3][7][1]
  2. (figurative) A rooted prejudice, an old wives' tale.[4]

Usage notes

A separate avia is an unidentified plant in Columella, perhaps groundsel, of unknown origin.[4][3][6][1] The neuter plural āvia, from the adjective āvius “pathless”, means pathless or wild regions.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson