senex

English

Etymology

From Latin senex.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛnɛks/

Noun

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

• “senex, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Further reading

• wise old man on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Latin

Senex (old man).

Etymology

PIE word
*sénos

From Proto-Italic *seneks, from Proto-Indo-European *sénos (“old”). 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). The use in Latin of an athematic declension with two different stems (nominative senek- and oblique sen-), versus thematic declension in other Indo-European languages, is an unresolved puzzle.

More information

According to one hypothesis, the stem sen- (seen in oblique forms such as senem, sene, senum) replaced an earlier thematic stem *seno- because of analogy to the stem iuven- of the antonym iuvenis (“young man”). The nominative singular of a non-neuter n-stem noun usually ends in -ō, but this ending came to be avoided in Latin when it would produce a monosyllabic form (compare canis from *ḱwṓ). Hence, in place of hypothetical *sō (or per Sihler, *sē), the nominative singular form senex, built on the stem senek-, came to be used alongside oblique forms built on the shorter stem sen-. Schrijver and De Vaan both express doubt about this analogical explanation for the origin of the stem sen-.

The origin of the stem senek- is also debated. It may simply continue a suffix containing PIE *k or *ḱ: compare -icus, -āx. An alternative, controversial hypothesis proposes that the PIE laryngeal *h₂ could develop into /k/ before /s/ in certain cases.

(Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?) Alternatively, 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.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛ.nɛks]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛː.neks]

Noun

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) as feminine old woman, older woman

   Synonyms: anus, anicula

   • c. 50 BCE – 19 BCE, 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.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Declension

Third-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	senex	senēs
genitive	senis	senum
dative	senī	senibus
accusative	senem	senēs
ablative	sene	senibus
vocative	senex	senēs

Derived terms

• senex amans
• senex iratus

Descendants

• Old French: sené
• Borrowings:
  • → English: senex
  • → Italian: sene
• Vulgar Latin: *senicus
  • Aromanian: sinrecu
  • Neapolitan: sanice (Old Abruzzese)
  • Occitan: senec, sanec
  • Old Italian: senici
  • Romanian: sânec, sinec

Adjective

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

• Mostly used with animate masculine nouns: Allen and Greenough suggests it can be characterized as a "masculine adjective". However, some inanimate examples occur in the poetry of Martial (masculine: senibus autumnis, senem ... cadum; neuter: senibus ... Damascenis) 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. 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").
• 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. To express the sense "eldest" or "born earliest" when speaking of a group of persons, the phrase maximus nātū/nātū maximus was used: e.g. maximus nātū ex iīs "the eldest of them". Depending on the context, the English superlative adjective "oldest" can alternatively correspond to the superlative of other semantically similar Latin adjectives, as in vetustissimus amīcōrum (“the oldest of (one's) friends”) or veterrimī poētae (“the oldest/earliest/most ancient poets”).

Declension

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

	singular		plural
	masc./fem.		masc./fem.
nominative	senex		senēs
genitive	senis		senum
dative	senī		senibus
accusative	senem		senīs senēs
ablative	sene		senibus
vocative	senex		senēs

Derived terms

• senāculum
• senātor
• senātōrius
• senātrīx
• senātus
• seneciō
• senectus
• seneō
• senēscō
• seniculus
• senīlis
• senīliter
• senium

Related terms

• senior

Descendants

• Old French: sené
• Spanish: sené
• Sardinian:
  • Logudorese: sèneghe
  • Nuorese: sèneche

See also

• antīquus

Further reading

• “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, 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
• Schrijver, Peter C. H. (1991), The reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Latin (Leiden studies in Indo-European; 2), Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, →ISBN, pages 149-154
• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995), New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 167, 319