recento

Forms

recentō (present infinitive recentāre, supine recentātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is a verb from Latin recēns (“fresh, new”), meaning “to make fresh”.^[1] Gaffiot, Jeanneau and VoLat do not treat it as a word of its own and refer it to recantō.^[2][3][4]

It has descendants in Romance, which the TLL lists with meanings such as “refresh”, “rinse” and “clean”: among them Old Spanish recentar, French rincer and Catalan rentar.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Aulus Gellius reports that the poet Gnaeus Matius coined recentatur for the Greek ἀνανεοῦται, “is born again and becomes new”, in the line iamiam albicascit Phoebus et recentatur, “now Phoebus whitens and is renewed”.^[1]

Semantic evolution

In the active it meant “to refresh, restore”: Venantius Fortunatus, in his Life of Radegund, has a drink refresh the weary.^[1] The neuter participle recentātum was used as a noun for a kind of cooled wine in the Latin versions of Oribasius and Alexander of Tralles.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 165 AD – Aulus Gellius quotes Gnaeus Matius' coinage recentatur.^[1][5]
• c. 525–c. 605 AD – The Latin Alexander of Tralles allows recentatum to be drunk at the midday meal.^[1][5]
• 536–c. 610 AD – Venantius Fortunatus uses it for “to refresh”.^[1][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (passive) To be renewed, be born again.^[1]
2. (Late Latin) To refresh, restore.^[1]
3. (Late Latin, neuter participle as a noun) recentātum: a kind of cooled wine.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
2. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
3. ^ Jeanneau, Gérard; Woitrain, Jean-Paul; Hassid, Jean-Claude (2017), Dictionnaire latin-français, online ed., prima-elementa.fr
4. ^ VoLat: Vocabolario della Lingua Latina (2018), Milan: Hoepli
5. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de