tenuo

Forms

tenuō (present infinitive tenuāre, perfect active tenuāvī, supine tenuātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin tenuis (“thin”) + -ō.^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces tenuis to Proto-Italic *tn̥(a)u- and Proto-Indo-European *tnh₂-(e)u- (“thin”), remade from a u-stem into an i-stem, and compares Sanskrit तनु (tanú-, “thin, slender”) and Ancient Greek ταναός (tanaós, “thin, elongated”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first quotation is from Lucilius, on spelling: one is to make the sound thin, with ⟨i⟩, in pilam and pilum, but add ⟨e⟩ for the plural peila.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is to make thin or slender: Ovid has a man's legs joined and tapering into a snake's tail, and the moon thinning its full orb.^[2] It is to wear down, as Lucretius' ring worn thin on the finger and Ovid's ploughshare, and to make the body lean: Virgil's breeders thin their herds on purpose.^[2][3] It is used of reducing a swelling, of streams shrinking into many channels, and of making things less dense: Horace has the night air thin out the dregs of Massic wine.^[2] It is also to reduce non-material things, as anger, to make the voice thin, as in Ovid, and to belittle: in Horace one is told to stop diminishing great things in small measures.^[2] Lewis & Short find it in poetry and post-Augustan prose.^[3] Church Latin glosses it to lessen or make thin.^[5] English attenuate comes from its compound attenuō.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius of thinning a vowel.^[2][7]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of a ring worn thin.^[2][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of herds kept lean.^[2][7]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of thinning wine in the night air.^[2][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of a man turned into a snake.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make thin or slender, attenuate; to cause to taper; to draw out (wool).^[2][3][1]
2. To wear down; to make lean, emaciate; to shrink.^[2][1]
3. To make less dense, rarefy.^[2][3]
4. To reduce, diminish; to make (the voice) thin; to belittle.^[2][1][5]
5. (phonetics) To narrow (a sound) into a single vowel.^[2]

Word family

• attenuō
• extenuō
• tenuabilis
• tenuatim

Related words

• tenuis

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ 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 Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de