denominative

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European*de
2. Proto-Indo-European*déh₁
3. Proto-Italic*dē
4. Latindē
5. Latindē-
6. Proto-Indo-European*h₁nómn̥
7. Proto-Italic*nōmn̥
8. Latinnōmen
9. Latinnōminō
10. Latindēnōminō
11. Late Latindēnōminātīvus
12. English todaydenominative

From Late Latin dēnōminātīvus, a calque of Ancient Greek παρώνυμος (parṓnumos, “derivative”). It originally had the meaning “derived”, but in its grammatical sense, it has developed the meaning “from a noun”, perhaps a reinterpretation of the Latin morphemes that it consists of: the preposition dē (“from”) and the stem of nōmen (“name, noun”).

Words from the same roots