Praenestineadj.n.

1683 R. Dixon Canidia iii. ii. 7 Once in an Age you may get a Prize, A Venus, by Chance, upon Prænestine Dice.

1772–4 R. Warner Churl iii. ii. 245 Ast. Merciful Boli! what strange beasts are those? Why did you not say oboli? Strat. To zave An o; like the Prænestine volk, who say Vor pewit.

1799 G. Buchanan Hist. Scotl. I. ii. 55 Here I will not be nice in inquiring why this oracle of Diana was so unknown to posterity, when the oracles of Faunus, of Sibylla, and the Prænestine lots, were then in so great credit.

1880 tr. A. Woltmann & K. Woermann Hist. Painting I. iv. 88 The engraved metal caskets of the kind commonly known as Prænestine cistæ, because they have been found for the most part at Prænestê, the modern Palestrina.

1885 Encycl. Brit. XIX. 654/2 Præneste was chiefly famed for its great temple of Fortune and for its oracle, in connexion with the temple, known as the ‘Prænestine lots’ (sortes Prænestinæ).

1911 19th Cent. Apr. 693 There seem to have been suburbanisms and provincialisms, like the Praenestine vulgarism..of dropping the first syllable of a word.

1939 L. H. Gray Found. Lang. 332 The oldest record of Italic is a Praenestine fibula of the seventh century B.C., Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi ‘Manius me fecit Numerio’.

1998 Amer. Jrnl. Archaeol. 102 841/1 The publication of the corpus of Praenestine ciste (bronze containers decorated with incised scenes and figurative feet and handles),..has given us an increasingly rich and accessible body of iconographic material.

1683 M. Payne tr. Plutarch Life Camillus in J. Dryden et al. tr. Plutarch Lives I. 489 These were the Prænestines and Volsces, who with great Forces wasted the Countries of the Roman Confederates.

1814 J. Aikin et al. Gen. Biogr. IX. 303/1 He excepted from the number one person to whom he had formerly been a guest, but the generous Prænestine indignantly refused to accept his life from the butcher of his fellow-citizens.

a1842 T. Arnold Hist. Rome (1868) xlv. 555 It was laid hold of by L. Pinarius, the governor of Enna, as a pretence for repeating the crime of the Campanians at Rhegium, and of the Prænestines more recently at Casilinum.

1902 Encycl. Brit. XXXIII. 897/2 The Romans..were inclined to sneer at the pronunciation and idiom of the Prænestines.

1949 Oxf. Classical Dict. 726/1 Praenestines loyally resisted Pyrrhus..and Hannibal, and actually preferred their own status to that of Roman citizens.

1998 Amer. Jrnl. Archaeol. 102 841/2 The Praenestines expressed their aspirations and expectations in a language that is composed of their indigenous vocabulary and that drawn from Greek discourse.

1939 L. H. Gray Found. Lang. 333 To the [Latino-Faliscan] group also belonged the closely similar Hernician and Prænestinian.

1954 M. A. Pei & F. Gaynor Dict. Linguistics 121 Latino-Faliscan, a branch of the Italic group of the Indo-European family of languages, consisting of the extinct languages Latin, Faliscan, Hernician and Praenestinian.