frenum

• fraenum, frænum (hypercorrect, nonstandard)

Borrowed from Latin frēnum (“bridle, curb, bit”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiː.nəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːnəm

frenum (plural frena or frenums)

1. (anatomy) Synonym of frenulum.

• “frenum”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “frenum”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

From Proto-Italic *frēnom, from earlier *θrēnom, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰr-eh₁-nom, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to hold”). Cognates include ferē, fermē and firmus.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈfreː.nũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈfrɛː.num]

frēnum n (genitive frēnī); second declension

1. bridle, harness, curb, bit
   • 65 CE, Lucius Annaeus Seneca Minor, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. Epistle XLI:

     Nōn faciunt meliōrem equum aureī frēnī.

     Golden bridles do not make a better horse.

   circumagere frēnīs equōs ― to reverse the direction of horses by the bridle

   addere frēna equīs ― to add the bridles to the horses

2. (transferred sense):
   1. means of guiding or governing; restraint, check, limit
   2. (poetic) horse, steed, charger
   3. (in general):
      1. (post-classical, rare) that which holds things together; band
      2. (anatomy) ligament which attaches the inside of the foreskin to the glans

Second-declension noun (neuter or otherwise).

• Nominative plural is mostly frēnī with frēna occurring more in poets. The ending of frēnī does not stem from the masculine second-declension nominative plural ending; instead it comes from a dual ending.

• “frenum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “frenum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• frenum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • (ambiguous) with loose reins: freno remisso; effusis habenis
    
• “frenum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “frenum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
• Dizionario Latino, Olivetti