bacchio

Forms

bacchio m (plural bacchi)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin baculum (“stick, staff”), through a syncopated form Vulgar Latin *baclum.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Latin had both the neuter baculum, from Cicero on, and the masculine baculus, from the 3rd century.^[6] The learned doublet is bacolo.^[1][4]

DEI notes that the word is missing as a popular form in southern Italy and in the rest of Romance, but that it passed into Basque makila.^[5][7] The LEI finds a few other popular traces, such as Old French bacler “to bar a door”, which with Logudorese bákkulu “stick” points to a variant *bacculum.^[6]

The Latin word goes with Ancient Greek βάκτρον (báktron, “stick, staff”) and Irish bacc (“crooked staff”).^[8][3] DELI and Devoto see in them a popular root ⟨bak-⟩.^[2][9] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *bak-(k)elo-, but since *b was very rare in Proto-Indo-European and the Celtic forms have an unexplained double consonant, he takes the whole group to be a loan from an unknown source.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Luigi Pulci, who died in 1484, with the sense of a pole for knocking fruit down from trees.^[2] The LEI dates the same record to 1483 and glosses it as a big stick or pole.^[6] Tommaseo quotes Pulci's Morgante: E pure attende a scaricare il bacchio (“and still he keeps bringing the stick down”).^[10] Nocentini gives an earlier date, before 1390.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The pole gave the verb bacchiare, to beat a tree to bring down its fruit, recorded in the 15th century in the carnival songs.^[2] In Tuscany the coarse, careless way of beating the trees gave the verb figurative senses: bacchiare una ragazza was to marry a girl off badly and bacchiare ogni cosa to let everything go to ruin.^[2]

Other uses of the noun are local or technical: a weapon for battering enemies and walls (Guglielmotti, 1889), a stick for bird-lime, a rod for going over threshed sheaves, a young shoot from a chestnut stump in Valdinievole, and the perches of a hen-house near Vinci.^[6] Tuscan made adverbial phrases of it: a bacchio or al bacchio “at random, carelessly”, from the image of someone striking the branches without care, and in un bacchio “in an instant”.^[10][11][5]

Timeline

• Before 1390 – Nocentini's date for the first record.^[3]
• Before 1484 – Luigi Pulci uses bacchio for a long stick or pole.^[2][6]
• 15th century – The verb bacchiare appears in the carnival songs.^[2]
• 1797 – D'Alberti records bacchio “lamb”, noting that it is not Tuscan.^[2]
• 1889 – Guglielmotti records the word for a weapon used against enemies and walls.^[6]
• 1952 – Bacchiatura is first recorded, in Cassola.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A long, fairly thick pole used to knock fruit, such as olives or nuts, down from the trees.^{[12][13][4][14][11][1]}
2. (Tuscany) In the phrases a bacchio “at random, carelessly” and in un bacchio “in an instant”.^[11][10]

Word family

• bacchiare
• bacchiata
• bacchiatura
• abbacchiare
• abbacchiato
• sbacchiare

Related words

• bacolo
• bacchetta
• abbacchio
• Latin baculum

Usage notes

GRADIT has two more words spelled bacchio: one is a regional 20th-century form of abbacchio “lamb”, shortened at the front, and DELI finds this sense already in 1797.^[12][2] The other is a variant of baccheo, the metrical foot of one short and two long syllables, a learned word from Latin bacchīus that is also stressed bacchìo.^[12][15][5] Bacchio is also the first person singular present of bacchiare.^[13][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 395
6. ^ 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. 4, 282
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
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, p. 53
10. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
12. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
14. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 4, 166