cenula

Forms

cēnula f (genitive cēnulae); first declension^[1] It is also spelled caenula and coenula.^[2]

Etymology

It is a diminutive, from Latin cēna (“dinner”) + -ula.^[3][4][1] De Vaan traces cēna to Proto-Italic *kert(e)snā- (“meal”) and Proto-Indo-European *kert-s-nh2- (“portion”), a cut part that came to mean a meal.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro has it in his Menippean Satires, of varying a little dinner with conversation,^[4][6] and Köbler dates it from Cicero,^[7] who in the Tusculans quotes the words “from yesterday's little dinner you did not understand that I have no need of money”.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

Cicero also speaks of giving little dinners (cēnulās facere).^[2][8] Petronius, Martial, Juvenal and Suetonius use it of modest meals,^[4] and Suetonius' life of Claudius has an invitation to a sudden little dinner.^[6][2] Gellius describes a dinner at which the guests looked for clever questions rather than delicacies.^[4]

Christian writers kept it: Tertullian complains that “our little suppers” are mocked as extravagant, Jerome asks a reader to be content with “our little meal”, and Sulpicius Severus has the bread left over from a supper.^[4] Glossaries render it with a Greek diminutive for a meal.^[4]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it in the Menippean Satires.^[4][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it in the Tusculans and the letters.^[4][7]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius uses it of an invitation by Claudius.^[2][7]
• c. 160–220 AD – Tertullian uses it of Christian suppers.^[4][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A little dinner, a light supper.^[3][2][8]

Related words

• cēna

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ 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 Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier