Mar. 16th, 2012

tramontane

Mar. 16th, 2012 07:13 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
tramontane (truh-MON-tayn, TRAM-uhn-tayn) - adj., of, located, coming from, or pertaining to beyond the mountains; esp. beyond the Alps as viewed from Italy, transalpine; foreign, barbarous, strange. n., a tramontane person, a stranger, a foreigner; a wind from the other side of the mountains, esp. a northern polar wind in northern Italy and southeastern France.


In other words, a clipped form of transmontane. Both noun and adjective were re-borrowed in the 1590s from Italian tramontano (though there's also an earlier sense tramountayne, meaning the pole star, in use c.1300-c.1500), from Latin trānsmontānus, beyond the mountains.

---L.

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