Etymologically
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freno

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈfreː.noː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈfrɛː.no][1]

Forms

frēnō (present infinitive frēnāre, perfect active frēnāvī, supine frēnātum); first conjugation[1] It is also spelled fraenō;[2] Prudentius has the archaic passive infinitive frēnārier.[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin frēnum (“bridle”) + -ō.[3][4][1] De Vaan traces frēnum to Proto-Italic *frēno- and Proto-Indo-European *dʰr-eh₁-no- (“holding”);[5] Ernout and Meillet's link with frendō, as what the horses chew on, he finds possible but not straightforward.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero uses it of curbing a man's frenzy that neither laws nor courts could check.[3][6]

Semantic evolution

It is to fit horses with a bridle, or to control them with one: Livy has horsemen holding their horses bridled and saddled, and the TLL notes that the participle frēnātus, bridled, appears early and may have been formed directly from the noun.[3][4][2] Poets extend it to steering a ship and to checking the course of moving things, as Virgil's winter that curbs the rivers with ice.[3] Figuratively it is to keep in check, curb or govern a person or his impulses.[3][2] Lewis & Short note that it is mostly poetic.[2] In Church Latin it is to bridle.[7]

Timeline

  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of curbing frenzy.[3][6]
  • 70–19 BC – Virgil of ice curbing rivers.[3][6]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of bridled horses.[3][6]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To bridle, control with a bridle; to steer a ship.[3][2][7][1]
  2. To check the course of; to block an entrance.[3]
  3. To curb, restrain, govern.[3][2][1]

Word family

  • dēfrēnātus
  • effrēnō
  • frēnātor
  • infrēnātus
  • īnfrēnō
  • offrēnō
  • refrēnō
  • frenatio

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 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 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