ceno

Forms

cēnō (present infinitive cēnāre, perfect active cēnāvī, supine cēnātum); first conjugation^[1] It is also spelled caenō and coenō.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin cēna (“dinner”) + -ō.^[3][4] De Vaan traces cēna (Old Latin ⟨cēsna⟩, reported by Festus) to Proto-Italic *kert(e)snā- (“meal”), cognate with Oscan kersnu (“meal”) and Umbrian śesna (“meal”); the Umbrian participle ⟨çersnatur⟩ “having dined” matches the Latin verb.^[5][4] The traditional etymology is Proto-Indo-European *kert-s-nh₂- (“portion”), from the root “to cut”, a cut portion becoming a meal;^[5] Schrijver instead proposed a link with Cerēs, and de Vaan finds neither fully convincing.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus, Curculio: herī cēnāvistīne?, “did you dine yesterday?”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is to have dinner, the main meal of the day, with the place or company named (Naevius: will you dine here or in the dining-room?).^[3] Transitively it is to dine on something: in Plautus Jupiter dines on the smell of sacrifices daily.^[3] A popular verse in Suetonius uses it of Augustus acting out new adulteries of the gods at dinner.^[3] The perfect participle cēnātus has an active sense, “having dined”, which Varro also reports.^[2][1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of dining and of dining on the smell of sacrifices.^[3][6]
• c. 235–200 BC – Naevius of where to dine.^[3][6]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius quotes a verse on Augustus' feast.^[3][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To dine, have dinner, sup.^[3][1]
2. (transitive) To dine on, eat at dinner.^[3][1]
3. (passive, of a dinner) To be served.^[1]

Word family

• cēnāculum
• cēnātiō
• cēnātor
• cēnāturiō
• cēnātus
• cēnitō
• incēnō
• percēnō
• succēnō

Related words

• cēna

References

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