zucchini

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian zucchini, the plural of zucchino (“small marrow”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} a diminutive of zucca (“gourd, squash”),^[2][3][5][7] formed with the suffix -ino.^[8] Zucca is perhaps from Late Latin cucutia, a word of unknown origin,^[7][5] which the American Heritage Dictionary thinks may be related to Latin cucurbita (“gourd”).^[5] Another diminutive of zucca gave zucchetto.^[7][3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Etymonline finds it in 1910 in travel books about Italy, as an Italian word for a small, tender squash, and in 1915 in English cookery books.^[7] The OED's first quotation is from the Boston Sunday Globe of 1916.^[2] Barnhart records the early spellings succini (1929) and zuchini (1945) and calls the word American,^[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to 1925,^[4] and Dictionary.com to 1925–30.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word came with the vegetable from Italy.^[8] Italian has both a feminine zucchina and a masculine zucchino, and English took the masculine plural, but uses it as a singular, with the plurals zucchini and zucchinis.^[8][4][9] The OED records it with both plural and singular agreement.^[2] Its use as an attribute, as in zucchini bread, is recorded from 1960.^[2] It is the usual word in North America and Australia,^[6][10][11] where British English says courgette.^[9][8]

Timeline

• 1910 – an Italian word in travel books about Italy.^[7]
• 1916 – courgettes, with plural or singular agreement.^[2]
• 1929 – in the spelling succini.^[3]
• 1945 – in the spelling zuchini.^[3]
• 1960 – used attributively.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small, usually dark green summer squash with a long, slender, smooth fruit, eaten as a vegetable while young; a small vegetable marrow: She grilled slices of zucchini with garlic.^{[4][9][10][6][11]}

Related words

• zucchetto

Usage notes

In British English the vegetable is usually called courgette, a diminutive of French courge (“gourd”), recorded in English from 1931.^[9][8][2] The plural is zucchini or zucchinis.^[4][9][10]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e f Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b The Macquarie Dictionary (2013), 6th ed., Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary Publishers