septenus

Forms

septēnus (feminine septēna, neuter septēnum); first/second-declension numeral^[1] The genitive plural is septēnum.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin septem (“seven”) + -ēnī.^[2][1][4] Wiktionary takes it to come from an earlier ⟨*septemsnos⟩.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Plautus,^[4] who has a slave boy told to start the games with seven ladlefuls each, from the top.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It is a distributive, mostly in the plural septēnī, "seven each": Livy has seven iugera of land given to each of the plebs and two bundles of seven books each, and Cicero boys of sixteen and seventeen years.^[2][3] It also means seven at a time: in Virgil the Athenians must send seven of their children every year, and Juvenal speaks of hating someone seven hours a day.^[2] With little distributive force it is simply "seven", of things that form a set: Virgil has a snake drawing seven coils, Ovid a pipe of seven reeds, and Seneca and Propertius the seven mouths of the Nile.^[2][3] In the singular it means sevenfold, mostly in poetry and post-Augustan prose: Lucan has the sevenfold stream of the Nile, and Statius the seven-mouthed Danube.^[2][3] Gellius uses bis septēnī for fourteen.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of seven ladles each.^[2][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero in the genitive septēnum.^[2][3]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of seven children sent each year.^[2]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of seven iugera each.^[2]
• 39–65 AD – Lucan of the sevenfold Nile.^[2][3]

Meanings

Numeral

1. (plural) Seven each, seven apiece; seven at a time.^[2][3][1]
2. (plural, with little distributive force) Seven, of a set.^[2][3][1]
3. (singular, poetic) Sevenfold, repeated seven times.^[2][3][1]

Word family

• septēnārius

Related words

• septem
• septimus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de