Jentacular
(pronounced yen-tac-u-la)
Of or pertaining to a breakfast taken early in
the morning, or immediately on getting up.
Early 1700s: A learned borrowing from Latin iēntāculum (breakfast (especially one taken immediately upon rising)), the construct made by appending the English suffix –ar (of, near, or pertaining to (used to form adjectives)). The construct of iēntāculum (genitive iēntāculī) was ientō (I breakfast), a variant of ieientō (to have breakfast), from ieiūnus (fasting, abstinent, hungry), from ientare the primitive Indo-European hyag (to sacrifice; to worship) + -culum (the diminutive suffix), from –culu, a re-bracketing of the diminutive suffix -lus on nouns ending in –cus. Jentacular is an adjective. Authors (presumably of literary novels) wanting a noun could use the Latin jentaculum (jēntāculum), an alternative form of ientaculum, the construct being iēntō (I breakfast) + -culum (a suffix used to form nouns derived from verbs, notably nouns representing tools and instruments).
The Late Latin jēntāculum (I breakfast) reflects the post-Classical changes to spelling in Latin, a highly technical array of changes which happened over hundreds of years in the Middle Ages and was concerned with rendering a pattern of spelling more aligned with actual pronunciation and one change was that jēntāculum replaced the Classical Latin iēntāculum. In Classical Latin, it was ientare. In modern writing, the consonant "i" is distinguished from the vowel "i" by using the extended version of the letter "j" for the former, just the vowel form of "v" is distinguished from the consonant form by writing the cursive form "u" for the former. In the modern alphabet, they’ve long officially been different letters, and they sound much more different in English. However, in Latin, ientare (strictly speaking IENTARE since half-uncials didn’t then exist)) was pronounced yen-ta-reh and it was this which inspired medieval scholars to decide the written should pay greater tribute to the spoken. Because in Classical Latin representing the consonant “j” was usually not doubled in writing, a single “i” represented a double “j”; medieval scholars thought a simple approach preferable, much as the Americans corrected many needless redundancies in English (color vs colour; catalog vs catalogue etc).
Jentacular enjoyed a vogue in the eighteenth and nineteenth century among those who liked to add the odd "learned" flourish to their writing but most dictionaries now describe it as obscure, rare or obsolete. Indeed, its most frequent appearance now appears to be on lists of unusual words but it still attracts those who like such things, some of whom complicate it further with constructs like post-jentacular, following the English philosopher (most associated with utilitarianism) and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who would write of the “ante-jentacular” and “post-prandial” walks he took in his garden. Despite the Benthamite endorsement, jentacular seems effectively defunct, the English-speaking world taking the view "breakfast" needs no adjective, the occasional instance of breakfasty never catching on, presumably because the ungainly English construction was worse than the anyway unwanted though elegant Latinate form. The word "breakfast" dates from 1463 and is one of the language’s less etymologically challenging coinings, meaning obviously a meal which "breaks" the overnight "fast" and Australians, as would be expected, came up with "brekkie", a style of diminutive obligatory among certain classes. Civilised peoples like the Italians and French seem always to have managed to enjoy breakfast but for the English it’s been often depicted as a chore. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792–1822) poem Peter Bell the Third by Miching Mallecho, Esq (composed circa 1820 but not published until 1839) clearly preferred the dinner and late-night suppers to anything jentacular:
And all these meet at
levees; --
Dinners convivial and political; --
Suppers of epic poets;
-- teas,
Where small talk dies
in agonies; --
Breakfasts professional and critical;
Perhaps that was because the taking of strong drink was something more associated with dinner than breakfast, even among the Romantic poets.
Jentacular thinspiration: A recommended pro-ana breakfast.
