dominiōnem

Meaning

1. Proto Gallo Romancereconstructiondonjon (main tower of a castle)

Declension

Origins

The explanations offered to date are as follows, arranged in descending order of plausibility: * Von Wartburg favours a derivation from Latin dominus (“master, lord”; cf. *summiōnem < summum) with an original sense of “tower that dominates the entire castle” (similarly, “master tower” per Pfister). This assumes a kind of figurative or anthropomorphic expression but is otherwise unproblematic. * Gamillscheg (among others) favours a derivation from a supposed Frankish cognate of Old Norse dyngja f (“house in the ground where women do their work”) and Middle High German tunc m (“underground chamber covered with dung for protection against the cold; women's weaving-room; crop storage room”). This runs into several formal issues with the Romance forms grouped below, which—pace Gamillscheg—do imply an original */mnj/. Cf. somniāre > Old French songier, soignier; Old Occitan somnhar, somjar, sonjar. Likewise the ⟨m⟩ in the earliest documented reflex of *dominiōnem in the Oïl area: ⟨domnione⟩ in a Latin chronicle written in the 1040s in Mouzon. * Van Osta posits a formation meaning “lord’s tower”. There exists no suffix with the required meaning and form.

In English words that came into English from dominiōnem

• dungeon*dominiōnem