habena

Borrowed from Latin habena.

habena (plural habenae)

1. A restricting bandage or frenum

• Bahena

From Latin habeō. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /haˈbeː.na/, [häˈbeːnä]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /aˈbe.na/, [äˈbɛːnä]

habēna f (genitive habēnae); first declension

1. thong, rein, lash, bridle
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 1.62–63:

     [...] Rēgemque dedit quī foedere certō
     et premere et laxās scīret dare iussus habēnās.

     And [Jupiter] gave [the winds] a king who by chartered agreement would know how to restrain as well as to give loosened reins [to them], [the king] having been commanded [to do so].
     (Jupiter commands King Aeolus who metaphorically can harness the winds much as a charioteer drives horses. See Aeolus (son of Hippotes).)

   • 524 CE, Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 4.1m:

     Hīc rēgum sceptrum dominus tenet
     Orbisque habēnās temperat

     Here the lord of kings holds his sceptre, and controls the reins of the world

2. (naval, of a ship's rigging) sheet

First-declension noun.

• → Proto-Brythonic: *aβuɨn (see there for further descendants)

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