bacca

Forms

bacca f (plural bacche)^[1] Old Italian forms include bache, bacce and baki.^[2]

Etymology

It is learned: it is borrowed from Latin bacca (“berry; pearl”), a variant of bāca.^[3][4][5] DELI and DEI treat both the sense “berry” and the sense “pearl” as learned.^[3][5] The LEI accepts this for “pearl” but allows a popular route for the general sense “berry”, because the dialect forms cluster in north-eastern Italy beside the type of Vulgar Latin *baccula.^[6]

The Latin word lived on in popular form in French baie, Occitan baga and Portuguese baga.^[7] Spanish baya is a loan from French, while the native baga has come to mean the husk of flax seed.^[7] The LEI adds Old Occitan baga (“olive”) and Sardinian báγa (“juniper berry”).^[6]

The origin of the Latin word is unknown.^[3][8] Nocentini treats it as a typical word of the pre-Latin substrate, because of its sound shape, its meaning and the lack of outside cognates.^[7] DEI and DELI call it Mediterranean, and DEI sees the alternation of double and single /k/ as typical of pre-Indo-European words.^[5][3][9] The Roman antiquarians connected it with the name of Latin Bacchus, a link Battisti thought possible through a Greek gloss for the myrtle berry, the grape and the pear, in which case the god would be named after the fruit.^[7] De Vaan finds the link with Ancient Greek Βάκχος (Bákkhos) uncertain, since the Greek name was probably borrowed from Lydian, and mentions a comparison with a Berber word for blackberry and mulberry, both perhaps taken from a substrate language.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a Florentine translation of Ovid's Ars amandi from before 1313, with the sense of a small, mostly round fruit of a tree or shrub.^[2][7] DELI dates its first record of the fruit sense to before 1333, in Simintendi.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the word for any small, more or less round and hard fruit of a tree or shrub, and also for a pearl, a gem or a bead of coral in a necklace.^[2] The sense “bead of a necklace” rests on a single example, in Maestro Alberto (before 1332), which all the dictionaries repeat.^[3] The sense “pearl” was already Latin, and belonged to poetic language.^[3]

In old Roman texts the word appears as vaca for grains of salt (c. 1258) and of wheat (c. 1358).^[6] DELI records vaca in a Roman recipe book of 1434–1449, and Tuscan baca “bean pod” in Fanfani (1863).^[3] In the dialects of Trentino and Lombardy forms such as bàgia and baghe name various berries and the cones of the Scots pine.^[6]

Tommaseo called bacca a Latinism to be used sparingly, since Italian has coccola.^[10] In modern botany the word is a technical term for a fleshy fruit without a woody stone, as against the drupa.^[11][12]

Timeline

• Before 1313 – Bacca “small round fruit” appears in a Florentine translation of Ovid.^[2]
• Before 1332 – Maestro Alberto uses bacca for a bead of a necklace.^[3]
• Before 1333 – Simintendi uses bacca for a fruit.^[3]
• 1434–1449 – The Roman form vaca appears in a recipe book.^[3]
• 1863 – Fanfani records Tuscan baca “bean pod”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) A berry: a fleshy fruit with a thin skin, juicy pulp and no woody endocarpo, with one or more seeds, as in the grape, the date or the tomato.^[4][11][12]
2. Any small round fruit of a tree or shrub: le bacche del sambuco.^[13][14]
3. (loosely) The cone of the juniper and the drupe of the laurel or the myrtle.^[4][11][12]
4. (archaic) A pearl or gem; a bead of a necklace or rosary.^{[4][11][13][14]}

Word family

• baccaceo
• baccarello
• baccola

Related words

• coccola
• French baie
• Latin baca

Usage notes

A separate, obsolete literary bacca meaning “bacchante” (baccante) (14th century) is a learned borrowing from Latin Baccha, from the Greek name of a priestess of Bacchus.^[4][15][5] The plural is bacche.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c 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 g h i j k l 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 Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 392
6. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 4, 104
7. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c d 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 c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli