anguilla

Forms

anguilla f (plural anguille)^[1] Old Italian forms include anguila, anghuille and anguilli.^[2] A type Lombard inguilla is spread across Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna and the Marche.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin anguīlla (“eel”), a diminutive of anguis (“snake”).^{[4][5][6][1][7]} The Latin word lives on across the Romance languages except Romanian: French anguille, Old Occitan anguila, Catalan anguila, Spanish anguila, Portuguese enguia, Sardinian ambidda, Friulian anzile and Dalmatian angiola.^[3][8][5] The Spanish and Portuguese words go back to a variant *anguīla, and the Portuguese one to *inguila, which may also explain the northern type inguilla.^[5][3]

Varro already noted that the eel was named after a land animal it resembles.^[9] De Vaan derives the Latin word from anguīnus (“of a snake”), and notes other analyses that make it a compound of the word for “snake” and a word for a worm.^[10] Similar pairs of “eel” and “snake” are Ancient Greek ἔγχελυς (énkhelus) beside ἔχις (ékhis, “viper”) and Lithuanian ungurỹs (“eel”) beside angìs (“snake”), with Russian угорь (úgorʹ, “eel”); but no single Indo-European form can be reconstructed from them.^[5][1] The Latin word for “snake” is from Proto-Indo-European *h₂(e)ngʷʰ-i- (“snake”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur, of the last quarter of the 12th century, which the LEI dates to about 1250; there the word names the freshwater fish shaped like a snake.^[2][3] Zingarelli dates the word to 1266; the LEI's first Tuscan record is Giamboni, before 1292, and DELI's the Italian translation of the Tesoro, late in the 13th century.^[11][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Dante writes of a tail stretched out and moving like an eel: E quella tesa, come anguilla, mosse (“and that, stretched out, it moved like an eel”).^[12] The Italian Tesoro repeats the old belief that the eel is born of mud, so that the harder one squeezes it, the faster it slips away.^[12][9] Old Italian had the sayings non vedere l'anguilla nella fonte and tenere l'anguilla per la coda, “to hold the eel by the tail”, of an impossible or short-lived success.^[2]

The slipperiness gave the figurative sense of a person who evades responsibility, recorded in 1865, and of a very agile person.^[4][6] In shipbuilding an anguilla is a longitudinal timber between two beams.^[6][7][13] The diminutive anguillula, a small parasitic nematode worm, dates from 1892.^[4]

Timeline

• Last quarter of the 12th century – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur has anguila.^[2]
• 1292 – Giamboni uses anguilla.^[3]
• Late 13th century – The Italian translation of the Tesoro uses the word.^[4]
• 1865 – The figurative sense of a slippery person is recorded in Tommaseo–Bellini.^[4]
• 1892 – Anguillula is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. An eel, the edible fish with a snake-like body (Anguilla anguilla), which lives in fresh water and goes down to the sea to spawn; also any fish of the genus Anguilla: anguilla marinata.^[6][14][11]
2. (figurative) A very agile person: Quel portiere è un'anguilla.^[6][14][11]
3. (figurative) A slippery person, who dodges responsibilities: fare l'anguilla, to be evasive.^[6][7][15]
4. (nautical) A longitudinal timber between two beams on a wooden ship; on an iron ship, a girder running under the beams.^[6][7][11]

Word family

• anguillula
• anguillaia
• anguillare
• anguilletta
• anguillina
• anguillesco
• anguilleggiare

Related words

• angue
• capitone
• Latin anguilla
• Latin anguis

Usage notes

Common phrases are sgusciare come un'anguilla, to slip away like an eel, and anguilla elettrica, the electric eel or gimnoto.^[6][13][11] A large female eel is called a capitone.^[14][13] Nodo d'anguilla is a sailor's knot.^[15][13] The Caribbean island is Anguilla.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ 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, 1218
4. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ 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)
14. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana