Etymologically
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eno

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈeː.noː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈɛː.no][1]

Forms

ēnō (present infinitive ēnāre, perfect active ēnāvī, supine ēnātum); first conjugation[1] Curtius has the full perfect form ēnāverant; the shorter forms ēnāstī, ēnārunt and ēnāsset are also found.[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- + nō (“to swim”).[3][2][1] De Vaan traces nō to Proto-Italic *(s)nāje/o- (“to swim”) and Proto-Indo-European *(s)neh₂- (“to swim, float”).[4] Cognate with Old Irish snaïd (“to swim”) and Ancient Greek νέω (néō, “to swim”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and the TLL date it from Plautus,[4][2] whose Rudens has in vadōst, iam facile ēnābit, “he is in the shallows, now he will easily swim out”.[3]

Semantic evolution

It means to swim out or away, especially to escape by swimming.[3][5] Cicero uses it of a creature that swims out of a shell, Livy of ships so swallowed by the sea that no one swam to land, and Columella of a fish that never swam along the coasts of Gaul to the Spanish sea.[3][5] Lewis and Short call it rare but classical.[5]

Poets transferred it to flying: Lucretius uses it of the soul slipping out into the air, and Virgil of Daedalus flying to the cold north.[3][6] Cicero's Aratea uses it of Orion rising above the horizon.[3] Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus use it transitively, to sail across waters.[3][6]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of swimming out of the shallows.[3][7]
  • 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of the soul flying out into the air.[3][7]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of a creature swimming out of a shell and of Orion rising.[3][7]
  • 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of Daedalus' flight.[3][7]
  • 25–101 AD – Silius Italicus uses it of ships sailing out.[3][7]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (intransitive) To swim out or away; to escape by swimming, swim to safety.[3][5]
  2. (intransitive, poetic) To fly out; of a constellation, to rise above the horizon.[3][6]
  3. (transitive) To swim or sail across (waters).[3][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c 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 i j k l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ 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
  5. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d 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