pronomen

Forms

prōnōmen n (genitive prōnōminis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin prō (“instead of”) + nōmen (“name, noun”),^[2][1][3] a calque of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía).^[1][4]

Isidore of Seville explained that the pronoun is so called because it is put in place of the noun, so that the noun need not be tiresomely repeated.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Varro (116–27 BC), whose De lingua Latina uses it as a grammatical term for the pronoun.^[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

It remained a word of the grammarians: the TLL finds it almost only in grammatical writing from Varro on, besides Pliny's work on doubtful usage and Quintilian, and in verse only in Terentianus Maurus.^[3] The OLD separates a narrower use, a word that stands for a proper noun, especially a demonstrative, from the wider sense of any word that replaces a noun.^[2] The Latin translation of Irenaeus once uses it for a person's first name.^[9]

Medieval grammarians in Britain, from Aldhelm and Bede on, used it in the same sense and distinguished demonstrative, possessive and relative pronouns.^[10] English took it in the mid-15th century as pronoun, partly through Old French.^[4]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it as the grammatical term for the pronoun.^[6][8]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian uses it repeatedly in the Institutio oratoria.^[6][8]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville explains the name: the pronoun stands in place of the noun.^[5][8]
• 639–709 AD – Aldhelm discusses the metrical quantity of pronouns such as ille, iste and ipse.^[10][8]
• mid-15th century – English borrows it, partly through Old French, as pronoun.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (grammar) A pronoun: a word put in place of a noun; in the narrower sense, one standing for a proper noun, especially a demonstrative.^[2][6][3]
2. (rare) A person's first name.^[9]

Word family

• pronominalis

Related words

• praenomen
• English pronoun

Usage notes

Isidore of Seville illustrates it with Vergilius scripsit Bucolica followed by ipse scripsit Georgica (“Virgil wrote the Bucolics … he himself wrote the Georgics”): the pronoun spares a tiresome repetition of the name.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
6. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
9. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
10. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press