ieiunus

• ieiiunus, jejunus, jeijunus
• iaiunus, iaiiunus, jajunus, jaijunus

From the earlier iaiūnus with palatal vowel assimilation,^[1] for Proto-Italic *jagjūnos, remade from Proto-Indo-European *h₁yaǵ-yu-s, from *h₁yaǵ- (“to sacrifice”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /i̯ei̯ˈi̯uː.nus/, [i̯ɛi̯ˈi̯uːnʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /jeˈju.nus/, [jeˈjuːnus]
• Older: (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /i̯ai̯ˈi̯uː.nus/, [i̯äi̯ˈi̯uːnʊs̠]
• Given the etymological development from a form with /ajj/,^[1] the E in the first syllable was likely a short vowel.^[2] The imperial grammarian Terentianus Maurus cites the related word ieiūnium as an example of a word that contains a short vowel followed by double /jj/.^[3] In the middle of a word, [j] was regularly pronounced as a double consonant between vowels, so the heavy scansion of the first syllable in poetry does not indicate the length of the vowel. Some dictionaries such as Lewis and Short mark the E with a macron, which may be a misleading indication of the heavy scansion of the first syllable: compare peior (pronounced with /ejj/, but written in Lewis and Short as 'pējor').

ieiūnus (feminine ieiūna, neuter ieiūnum); first/second-declension adjective

1. fasting, abstinent, hungry
2. (figuratively) dry, barren, unproductive
3. (figuratively) scanty, meager
4. insignificant, trifling

First/second-declension adjective.

• “ieiunus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers