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Wiktionary

senex

English

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Etymology

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From Latin senex.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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senex (plural senexes)

  1. An older or old man, chiefly as a stock character.
    • 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.

References

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Further reading

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Latin

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Senex (old man).

Etymology

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PIE word
*sénos

From Proto-Italic *seneks, from Proto-Indo-European *sénos (“old”).[1] 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

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Noun

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senex m or f (genitive senis); third declension

  1. old man, older man (typically age 40 or older; older than a iuvenis)
    Synonyms: seneciō, veglō (Mediaeval)
    Antonym: iuvenis
    • 63 BCE, Cicero, Catiline Orations‎[2]:
      ; 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:
  2. old person, older person
    Antonym: iuvenis
  3. (uncommon)[2] as feminine old woman, older woman
    Synonyms: anus, anicula
    • Albius Tibullus, Elegiae 1.6.82:
      At quae fida fuit nulli, post victa senecta
      ducit inops tremula stamina torta manu
      firmaque conductis adnectit licia telis
      tractaque de niveo vellere ducta putat.
      Hanc animo gaudente vident iuvenumque catervae
      Conmemorant merito tot mala ferre senem,
      Hanc Venus exalto flentem sublimis Olympo
      Spectat et, infidis quam sit acerba, monet.

Declension

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Third-declension noun.

Case Singular Plural
Nominative senex senēs
Genitive senis senum
Dative senī senibus
Accusative senem senēs
Ablative sene senibus
Vocative senex senēs

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • Old French: sené
  • Borrowings:
  • Vulgar Latin: *senicus

Adjective

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senex (genitive senis, comparative senior); third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem)

  1. (usually of a person) old, aged, elderly
    Synonyms: grandaevus, senectus, vetus, vetulus, vetustus
    Antonyms: iuvenis, novus, novellus, recēns
    • 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;

Usage notes

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  • Mostly used with animate masculine nouns: Allen and Greenough suggests it can be characterized as a "masculine adjective".[3] However, some inanimate examples occur in the poetry of Martial (masculine: senibus autumnis, senem ... cadum; feminine: senibus ... Damascenis)[4] and in the Appendix Vergiliana (neuter: senibus ... saeclis). See Citations:senex. As with the noun, feminine use is rare. The explicitly feminine counterpart anus (“old woman”) is sometimes used adjectivally in like manner.[4] The late antique grammar Instituta artium (pseudo-Probus, probably 4th century) says it is grammatical to use senex and anus in apposition or as a predicate with a neuter noun such as mancipium n (“slave”) (e.g. senex mancipium "old man slave" = "old (male) slave", hoc mancipium senex est "this slave is an old man" = "this slave is old") but denies that senex is a neuter inflected adjective form in this context, saying it is impossible for it to be preceded by a neuter demonstrative (e.g. per pseudo-Probus, one can't say *hoc senex mancipium "this-N old man slave-N").[5]
  • The forms are normally identical to those of the noun, with consonant-stem ablative singular sene and genitive plural senum (compare iuvenis). Alternative i-stem forms (ablative singular senī and genitive plural senium) are only attested postclassically and are not usual.
  • The superlative form senissimus is not used in Classical Latin; the sense "oldest" is expressed instead with the phrase nātū maximus.

Declension

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Third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem).

Number Singular Plural
Case / Gender Masc./Fem. Masc./Fem.
Nominative senex senēs
Genitive senis senum
Dative senī senibus
Accusative senem senēs
Ablative sene senibus
Vocative senex senēs

Derived terms

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Descendants

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “senex, senis”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, pages 553-4
  2. ^ Smith, Kirby Flower (1916) “Notes on Tibullus”, in The American Journal of Philology, volume 37, number 2, page 143
  3. ^ Irregularities and Special Uses of Adjectives in Meagan Ayer, Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2014.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Christer Henriksén (2012) A Commentary on Martial, Epigrams Book 9, Book 9, Oxford University Press, page 361
  5. ^ Heinrich Keil (1864) Grammatici Latini / 4 Probi Donati Servii qui feruntur de Arte Grammatica Libri ex recensione H. Keilii‎[1], volume 4, page 91:
    si vero haec eadem nomina in genera neutra transeunt, haec non secundum genus neutrum sunt declinanda, sed pro locutione pronuntianda, ut puta 'nepos vel neptis mancipium', 'senex vel anus mancipium', utique non 'hoc nepos vel neptis mancipium' aut 'hoc senex vel anus mancipium' secundum genus neutrum declinari debeant, sed 'hoc mancipium nepos vel neptis est' et 'hoc mancipium senex vel anus est' pro locutione nunc tam numero singulari quam plurali accipi oporteat.

Further reading

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  • “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[3], 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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