alma

Forms

alma f (plural alme)^[1] Old Italian also had arma, recorded from the 13th to the 14th century.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *alima, a dissimilated form of Latin anima (“breath; life; soul”).^[3][4][5][1] DELI explains it by the loss of the unstressed /i/ after the stress and the dissimilation of the resulting /nm/ to /lm/.^[3] Nocentini counts it the popular outcome of the Latin word, beside the learned anima.^[6][1]

Sabatini–Coletti think the word probably came from the Po valley and compare Old French alme.^[7] Wiktionary gives as an alternative a borrowing from Old Occitan, comparing Occitan anma and arma.^[1] The same Latin word gave French âme, Catalan arma, Spanish alma and Portuguese alma, and Romanian inimă, which means “heart”.^[6][8]

The Latin noun belongs with animus (“mind, spirit”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁-mo- (“breath”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the poems of Pier della Vigna, who died in 1249, where the word means the soul, the immortal part of a person that comes from God and leaves the body at death.^[3][2][4]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th and 14th centuries the form arma stood beside alma in Tuscan and northern texts.^[2] Dante uses alma many times in the Commedia, and so do Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso.^[10] Tommaseo noted that Boccaccio, imitating the speech of Naples, wrote arma for it, which shows that the word was not only Tuscan.^[10]

By the 19th century the word survived only in verse, and Tommaseo found it rare even there, since anima was felt to be noble and sweet enough.^[10] He also records a Tuscan proverb that sets outward looks against the inner self: Occhio presto, alma mesta, occhio ridente, alma mordente (“a quick eye, a sad soul; a laughing eye, a biting soul”).^[10] The word is mostly used of a person of great or noble spirit, as in Leopardi's alme franche e generose, “free and generous souls”.^[5][11]

In the dialects, arma is the southern form of the word, and in the north it names the kernel of a fruit or a nut in its shell.^[12][8] Sicilian and Calabrian figghiu d'arma and Venetian fio d'anema, “child of the soul”, mean an adopted child.^[12][8]

Timeline

• Before 1249 – Pier della Vigna uses alma “soul”.^[3][2]
• 13th–14th century – The variant arma appears in Old Italian poetry.^[2]
• 1861 – Tommaseo describes the word as kept only in verse.^[10]
• 1896 – The latest example of alma “soul” that the LEI quotes, from Nencioni.^[2]
• 1955 – Alma, the board game, is first recorded.^[4][11]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) soul, the same as anima: Il poeta invocava pace per la sua alma stanca.^{[4][11][7][13]}
2. (literary, figurative) A person of great or magnanimous spirit.^[11][5][14]

Word family

• disalmare

Related words

• anima
• animo
• Spanish alma

Usage notes

Alma is also a masculine invariable noun for the board game halma, played on a board four times the size of a draughts board, where the pieces jump over each other and stay in play; it is recorded from 1955 and comes from Ancient Greek ἅλμα (hálma, “jump”).^{[4][11][5][1]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 2, 1284
3. ^ a b c d Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 138
13. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli