bosso

Forms

bosso m (plural bossi)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian busso and Old Italian boso.^[2] The Tuscan form is bossolo, and busso is still found as an old or regional form.^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin bŭxus (“box tree”), also neuter buxum, which named both the tree and things made of its wood.^[6][7][4][8] DELI, Nocentini and Devoto–Oli take the Latin word from Ancient Greek πύξος (púxos, “box tree”), and the LEI says that it came from Asia Minor through Greek, or has the same origin.^[6][9][3][8] Wiktionary doubts the borrowing, since the tree grew in Italy: Latin and Greek may both have it from a substrate language.^[1]

The same word is Friulian bós, French buis, Occitan bois, Catalan box, Spanish boj and Portuguese buxo; it survives in every Romance language except Romanian.^[9][8][10] It also passed into Germanic, as Old High German buhs, German Buchs and the English word box.^[8]

The vowel is irregular: Latin /u/ should give a closed /o/.^[8][9] The open /ɔ/ of the Tuscan word is compared with bosco, gobbo and lotta, where some see the northern habit of opening vowels in closed syllables; the variant busso may come from a Late Latin būxus or from a metaphonic plural with /u/.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Mantuan Belcalzer, 1299–1309, with the sense of the evergreen shrub and its wood.^[2] DELI's first record is the Tuscan translation of Crescenzi, about 1350, which describes the box as a small tree with very hard wood.^[6][11]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old Italian the word named a pipe made of boxwood as well as the shrub.^[2] The sense “boxwood” is recorded by itself in Sannazaro, before 1530.^[6] The hard yellowish wood was prized for turning and carving, and for wind instruments, combs and tops, as in Latin.^[8][11] Box is planted for hedges, which Italian gardens clip into shapes.^[7][3]

The word for the shrub stayed in botany, where Bosso is also the genus Buxus.^[7] Its derivative bossolo is recorded as a ballot urn in 1300–1313 and as a vessel of boxwood before 1348.^[6] Medieval Latin buxolus is found at Padua in the 13th century.^[6]

Timeline

• 1299–1309 – First record, in the Mantuan Belcalzer.^[2]
• 1300–1313 – Bossolo “ballot urn” is recorded in a statute.^[6]
• 1336–1338 – Boccaccio uses busso for the shrub in the Filocolo.^[8]
• About 1350 – Bosso in the Tuscan translation of Crescenzi.^[6][8]
• Before 1530 – Sannazaro uses the word for boxwood.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) box (Buxus sempervirens), an evergreen shrub with small glossy leaves and very hard wood, grown especially for hedges.^[7][3][4]
2. boxwood, the hard yellowish wood of this shrub: un pettine di bosso.^[7][3][4]
3. (literary) A wind instrument made of boxwood.^[7][3][12]
4. (botany) Any plant of the genus Buxus, and the genus itself.^[7]

Word family

• bossolo
• bosseo
• busseto
• bussetto

Related words

• bussina
• bussola
• busta
• Latin buxus
• Ancient Greek πύξος (púxos)

Usage notes

The DEI records a separate bosso meaning “boss, influential person”, from the American English word boss, brought back by Italian emigrants and used mostly in the South.^[13]

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 Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 8, 564
9. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 571