-enne

Inherited from Latin -āna.

• IPA^(key): /ɛn/

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

-enne f (noun-forming suffix, plural -ennes)

1. female equivalent of -en (noun)

   ‎Italien (“Italian”, noun) → ‎Italienne f

   ‎végétarien (“vegetarian”, noun) → ‎végétarienne f

-enne f (non-lemma form of adjective-forming suffix)

1. feminine singular of -en (adjective)

   ‎italien (“Italian”, adjective) → ‎italienne f

   ‎végétarien (“vegetarian”, adjective) → ‎végétarienne f

   ‎moyen (“average, middle”, adjective) → ‎moyenne f

   ‎européen (“European”, adjective) → ‎européenne f

From Latin -ennis (like in biennis, triennis), derived from annus (“year”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛn.ne/
• Rhymes: -ɛnne
• Hyphenation: -èn‧ne

-enne m or f by sense (adjective-forming suffix, plural -enni)
-enne m or f by sense (noun-forming suffix, plural -enni)

1. -year-old
2. also forms similar terms related to age

   L'anno prossimo diventa maggiorenne.

   She comes of age next year.

• -anne, -onne
• -ienne, -ianne (used with Class II weak verbs)
• -annae — early Mercian; -ene, -ane — late Old English

Inherited from Proto-West Germanic *-annjē, dative inflection of the infinitive -an; equivalent to -an + -e

• IPA^(key): /ˈen.ne/

-enne

1. Forms the inflected infinitive of verbs.

   to farenne [Mt. Bos. 8, 21]

   to go-∅

• The inflected infinitive is preceded by the preposition tō.
• On contracted verbs, this ending reduced to just -ne: fōnne, hōnne, tēonne.
• The form -anne was very common; this is traditionally taken as influence from the uninflected infinitive -an, but Versloot suggests that since -anne was attested earlier, it must have been original and i-umlaut therefore did not apply in the context of *-annjē. It is also possible that -enne reflects a reduction of -anne, but -anne, -annae is in turn a levelling of a prehistoric *-ennǣ.
• This suffix was used with Class I weak verbs and strong verbs; Class II weak verbs used the related -ienne and -ianne.

• Middle English: -ene, -ende (mostly early)

• Bosworth, Joseph (1898), Thomas Northcote Toller, editor, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, s.v. “-enne”, page 252/1
• Versloot, Arjen P. (18 April 2024), “The Old English gerund in ‑enne or ‑anne”, in North-Western European Language Evolution (NOWELE), volume 77, John Benjamins Publishing Company, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 14-22