Etymologically
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caneo

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈkaː.ne.oː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈkaː.ne.o][1]

Forms

cāneō (present infinitive cānēre, perfect active cānuī); second conjugation, no passive, no supine stem[1] The present participle cānēns is mostly used as an adjective, “grey, hoary, white”.[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin cānus (“grey, hoary”) + -eō.[4][1][3] De Vaan traces cānus to Proto-Italic *kasno- (“grey”) and Proto-Indo-European *ḱh₁s-no- (“grey”).[5] Cognate with Old English hasu (“grey-brown”) and Old High German haso (“hare”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it from Virgil on,[3] who speaks of old age not yet whitening both temples, necdum temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus.[4]

Semantic evolution

It means to be or become covered in white, to be hoary, and especially to be white or grey with age;[4] Lewis & Short call it poetic or post-Augustan prose.[2] Virgil also has hoary old age, cānēns senecta, and Ovid ashes that whiten in the fire.[2] Tacitus says that many like this appearance and grow grey still marked by it.[4] The TLL notes that writers used it very rarely, preferring cānēscō, and that its finite forms appear only in Tacitus.[3] In Church Latin it is to be white, grey or hoary.[6]

Timeline

  • 70–19 BC – Virgil, of greying temples.[4][3][7]
  • 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid, of whitening ashes.[2][7]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus, of growing grey.[4][7]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To be white, grey or hoary;[4][2][1][6] to be grey with age.[4]

Word family

References

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