aquila

Forms

aquila f (plural aquile)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin aquila (“eagle”), taken over in a learned or half-learned form: the LEI sets it against acqua, and the GDLI against the popular Old Italian aguglia.^[2][3] DEI calls it a half-popular development of the Latin word, found across Romance, and Nocentini and Wiktionary simply derive it from Latin.^[4][5][1]

The Latin word lives on in every Romance language: French aigle, Occitan aigla, Catalan àguila, Spanish águila, Portuguese águia, Sardinian àbbile and Romanian aceră.^[5][2][6] The LEI traces the French and Occitan words, and northern Italian and Sicilian forms such as áigola of Como, to a variant Vulgar Latin *aiqula, and Italian and Corsican dialect forms such as agula to *aqula.^[2][6]

The origin of the Latin noun is uncertain.^[7][8][9] Nocentini, de Vaan and the OLD derive it, probably, from the adjective Latin aquilus (“dark, blackish”), so that it was first the “dark bird”, which would explain the feminine gender.^{[5][10][11][1]} The GDLI notes that ancient writers, Festus among them, already derived the noun from the adjective, but that the derivation may have gone the other way, and DEI also allows the adjective to come from the noun.^[3][4] A proposal by Cohen (2004), a compound of words for “swift” and “bird”, is rejected by de Vaan as morphologically unlikely.^[10][1] Wiktionary adds that the word replaced the inherited Indo-European name of the eagle, Proto-Indo-European *h₃érō, through taboo.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI dates the form aquila to fra Gidio at the beginning of the 13th century and aghila to Giacomo da Lentini, before 1250, in the sense of the bird of prey.^[7] The TLIO's first record is Giacomo da Lentini (c. 1230–1250), and its first sense is the large raptor of the day, mostly the golden eagle.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already used the eagle as an image of the beloved woman and as a symbol of lofty genius, said of Homer, Saint Bernard and Saint John the Evangelist, and occhio d’aquila for a piercing sight.^[12] Dante calls Homer the poet who flies above the others like an eagle (che sovra li altri com’aquila vola).^[13] The figure of the eagle as the standard of the Roman legions, the sign of imperial power, a heraldic charge and a motif on coins and cloth is recorded from the 13th century, in the Fatti di Cesare.^[7][12]

The figurative “person of great intellect” is in Baretti's cervello d’aquila (1776), and in 1846 Rajberti notes that sublime minds are called aquile.^[7] Today it is more common in the negative, non è un’aquila, of someone not very bright.^[8][13] The constellation, a learned use going back to Varro, is recorded from the 16th century, and the eagle ray from the 17th, after the Late Latin aquila marina.^[4] Because the eagle was rare, the dialects gave its name to many smaller birds of prey, such as Ossolan eula “buzzard” and Valtellinese àigula.^[2]

Timeline

• Early 13th century – Fra Gidio has the form aquila.^[7]
• c. 1230–1250 – Giacomo da Lentini writes aghila.^[7][12]
• 13th century – The Fatti di Cesare uses it for the eagle as emblem or standard.^[7]
• Before 1327 – Cecco d'Ascoli uses aquilino of a hooked nose.^[7]
• 16th century – The name of the constellation is recorded.^[4]
• 1612 – Aquilotto “young eagle” appears in the first Crusca dictionary.^[7]
• 17th century – The name of the eagle ray is recorded.^[4]
• 1776 – Baretti writes cervello d’aquila for a brilliant mind.^[7]
• Before 1786 – G. Gozzi has aquilone for the paper kite.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. eagle: a large bird of prey with strong talons, a hooked beak and feathered legs, especially the golden eagle (aquila reale).^[14][8][15]
2. (zoology) Aquila, the genus of these birds, and the name of several eagles of other genera.^[14][15][13]
3. (figurative) A very clever, sharp-minded person, often in the negative: tuo cugino non è un’aquila, he is not very bright.^[14][8][16]
4. The figure of an eagle as an emblem or standard, especially that of the Roman legions, and a symbol of imperial power.^[14][8][13]
5. (zoology) Aquila di mare or pesce aquila, the eagle ray (Myliobatis aquila), a cartilaginous fish of the Mediterranean.^[8][16][17]
6. (astronomy) Aquila, a constellation of the northern sky.^[17][16]
7. A paper format of 70 by 100 cm.^[14]

Word family

• aquilotto
• aquilino
• aquilone

Related words

• aguglia
• Latin aquilus
• French aigle

Usage notes

Occhio d’aquila or vista d’aquila is a very sharp sight, and nido d’aquila a lonely place on a mountain top.^[8][16][15] The old form aguglia also meant “eagle”.^[3][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 640
3. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 1, 602
4. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 262
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
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 d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
15. ^ 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
16. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
17. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse