caminata

Latin

Alternative forms

• keminada (Kassel glosses)
• caminada, camenata

Etymology

Ellipsis of *[camera camīnāta], that is camera (“chamber”) and camīnus (“fireplace”) +‎ -āta (“provided with”).

First attested in 584 CE in sense 1 and the ninth century in sense 3, which developed in northern France to fill the semantic space vacated by camīnus ("fireplace", later "chimney"), the latter having been locally discarded after it became a homophone for cammīnus (“path, way”) due to ongoing consonant degemination.

The French descendant of camīnāta, namely cheminee, made its way into numerous other languages as chimney-making techniques spread from northern France.

Pronunciation

Comments

The vowel of the second syllable is etymologically [iː], which in the evolution to Romance would be expected to 'weaken' in this environment, at least variably, yielding something like [e]. Any of the attestations with ⟨i⟩ could equally reflect [i] or [e], since ⟨i⟩ stood for both vowels in Late Latin and early medieval spelling. (This orthographic phenomenon resulted from the merger of original Latin /ĭ/ and /ē/; it was absent from the few areas that lacked the merger, such as Sardinia and Roman Africa.) Some corroboration of the /e/ variant unambiguously indicated by the spelling ⟨camenata⟩ is to be found among the Old French reflexes of camīnāta with ⟨e⟩ in the second syllable, such as chamenee, where the vowel in question probably stands for /ə/, reflecting an older /e/. Nevertheless, it is more common to encounter Old French forms with /i/ instead, such as cheminee. As for the Italian cam(m)inata, its /i/ could derive from either an older /i/ or /e/, as the two vowels merged in Italian to /i/ in pretonic position. Otherwise, all the Romance reflexes provided below unambiguously reflect an original /i/. The overall triumph of this vowel can be attributed to continued influence from the root word camīnus (“fireplace”), where the maintenance of /ˈi/ is regular. In French it may have additionally been reinforced by a folk-etymology that analyzed cheminee as chemin (“path, way”) + -ée, thus legitimizing it against un-analyzable forms like chamenee.

Noun

camīnāta f (genitive camīnātae); first declension

1. (Late Latin) room with a chimney, living room, parlour
2. (Early Medieval Latin) bedroom
3. (Early Medieval Latin) chimney

Declension

First-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	camīnāta	camīnātae
Genitive	camīnātae	camīnātārum
Dative	camīnātae	camīnātīs
Accusative	camīnātam	camīnātās
Ablative	camīnātā	camīnātīs
Vocative	camīnāta	camīnātae

Descendants

• Italo-Romance:
  • Italian: camminata, caminata (archaic)
• North Italian:
  • Lombard: caminada
  • Romansch: chamineda, chaminada, chimineda
• Gallo-Romance:
  • Old French: cheminee (see there for further descendants)
  • Occitan: caminada, chaminada
  • → Proto-West Germanic: *kaminādā (see there for further descendants)

References

• “cheminée”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• Joan Coromines, José A. Pascual (1984) “chimenea”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), volumes II (Ce–F), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 361
• Niermeyer, Jan Frederik (1976) “caminata”, in Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill, page 120
• Walther von Wartburg (1928–2002) “camīnus”, in Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), volume 2: C Q K, page 139

Spanish

Etymology

From caminar +‎ -ata.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kamiˈnata/ [ka.miˈna.t̪a]
• Rhymes: -ata
• Syllabification: ca‧mi‧na‧ta

Noun

caminata f (plural caminatas)

1. (long) walk, hike, trek

Related terms

• caminar
• paseata
• viajata

 

See also

• paseo (“short walk”)

Further reading

• “caminata”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014