senex

English

Etymology

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Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈsɛnɛks/

Noun

senex (plural senexes)

  1. An older or old man.
    • 1997, Arthur Asa Berger, The Art of Comedy Writing, published 2017, →ISBN:
      6. Old Men or Senexes. Frequently these characters have a beautiful young ward who, often, they wish to marry (or wish to marry off to someone the ward doesn’t like) and it is the task of the hero, the male lead, often helped by a shrewd servant or slave (or similar figure) to outwit the senex and marry the girl. Sometimes the senex figure is actually married to a young wife and that poses numerous complications: the old husband is jealous, the young wife unsatisfied in various ways with a different perspective on life.
    • 2013, John P. Anderson, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Curse of Kabbalah, volume 7, Universal Publishers, →ISBN, page 53:
      Now for more about the four birds, explicitly identified with the four evangelists as the four old men or Senexes. Notice the repetition on four as the four Gospel books repeat much of the same history of Christ, perhaps as a result of an editorial effort to achieve uniformity.
    • 2016, Stephen Glynn, The British School Film: From Tom Brown to Harry Potter, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 90:
      It concludes, though, not with an image of resigned heads or rebellious newcomers: instead, after the camera lifts for the final credits to the heavens—the only site for the senexes’ social and educational ideals?—it descends on the playing fields where the school’s ration-book-resourceful porter Rainbow (Edward Rigby) and his youthful assistant are seen collapsed under the frequently-removed rugby posts.

Latin

mulier senex (old woman).

Etymology

PIE word
*sénos

From Proto-Italic *seneks, reshaped from Proto-Indo-European *sénos (old). Sihler holds the former inflection to be a consonant stem *sē, senis, with some remodeled endings taken from the antonym iuvenis; others propose an o-stem *senos (but this leaves the remade nominative singular less clearly motivated). Nonetheless, the apparent discrepancy between the nominative senex and the oblique root sen- may reflect a Proto-Italic root *seneɣ-, which in Old Latin would yield senex in the nominative and *seneh- (later contracted to sen-) in the oblique. Cognates include Lithuanian senis (old man), Ancient Greek ἕνος (hénos), Old Irish sen, Proto-Brythonic *hen, Avestan 𐬵𐬀𐬥𐬀 (hana, old), Sanskrit सन (sána) and Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌽𐌴𐌹𐌲𐍃 (sineigs).

Pronunciation

  • (Classical) IPA(key): /ˈse.neks/, [ˈs̠ɛnɛks̠]
  • (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /ˈse.neks/, [ˈsɛːneks]
  • (file)

Adjective

senex (genitive senis, comparative senior, superlative senissimus); third-declension one-termination adjective

  1. (usually of a person) old, aged, elderly
    • Late 4th century, Jerome [et al.], transl., edited by Roger Gryson, Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Vulgate), 5th edition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, published 2007, →ISBN, 2:22:
      Heli autem erat senex valde et audivit omnia quae faciebant filii sui universo Israheli
      Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel;

Declension

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Synonyms

Antonyms

Derived terms

See also

Noun

senex m or f (genitive senis); third declension

  1. old person, older person, old man, older man, (typically age 40 or older; older than a iuvenis); as feminine old woman, older woman
    • ; speech 2, section 5
      [] magno opere contemno, conlectum ex senibus desperatis, ex agresti luxuria, ex rusticis decoctoribus, ex eis qui vadimonia deserere quam illum exercitum maluerunt;
      [] I thoroughly despise that army composed of desperate old men, of clownish profligates, and uneducated spendthrifts; of those who have preferred to desert their bail rather than that army
    • Late 4th century, Jerome [et al.], transl., edited by Roger Gryson, Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Vulgate), 5th edition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, published 2007, →ISBN, 2:28:
      et erit post haec effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem et prophetabunt filii vestri et filiae vestrae senes vestri somnia somniabunt et iuvenes vestri visiones videbunt
      And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

Declension

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Synonyms

Antonyms

Derived terms

  • senex amans
  • senex iratus

Descendants

  • Old French: sené
  • Spanish: sené
  • Sardinian:
  • Borrowings:
    • Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value)
    • Italian: sene
  • Vulgar Latin: *senicus
    • Aromanian: sinrecu
    • Neapolitan: sanice (Old Abruzzese)
    • Occitan: senec, sanec
    • Old Italian: senici
    • Romanian: sânec, sinec

References

  • senex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • senex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • senex in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • senex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
  • Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
    • still quote a young (old) man: admodum adulescens, senex
  • Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911), “sĕnex”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 588
  • Sihler, Andrew L. (1995) New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN
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