buccellato

Forms

buccellato m (plural buccellati)^[1] Early forms include Old Italian bucellati, Old Italian bucelati and Old Italian buchillatu.^[2] Older dictionaries also give bucellato, boccellato and buzzelato.^[3][4] Northern forms with /dz/ include Venetian buzzolà, with Old Venetian bozzolao and Brescian bozzolà, and Sicilian has bucciddatu.^[5][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin buccellātum (“army bread, biscuit”), a Late Latin word first used by Ammianus Marcellinus.^[6][4][3][7] It is formed from Latin buccella (“morsel, small loaf”) + -ātus, a diminutive of bucca (“mouth; mouthful”).^[1][6][8] Devoto read it as bread fit to be broken into mouthfuls;^{[9][10][11][12]} Treccani and the GDLI as a ring of small rolls, and Zingarelli asks whether the small loaf was named for its shape like a crown or a mouth.^{[9][10][11][12]}

The LEI lists the word among the inherited forms: it lives on in Italy and in the Lower Engadine dialect of Romansh.^[3] Northern forms such as Venetian buzzolà were reshaped after búccola, and Medieval Latin bozolatus is recorded in the north from the 13th century.^[3][4] Some southern forms begin with ⟨p⟩.^[3] DEI takes buccello to be a back-formation from this word.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Cavalca's Pisan translation of the dialogues of Saint Gregory, before 1342, where a man takes due buccellati that had been offered to him; the TLIO glosses it as a bread filled with meat or baked with sweet ingredients, a small pie or ring cake.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

A Ligurian version of the same dialogues, from about 1350, has bucelati for a kind of biscuit or ring cake.^[3] The GDLI notes that in church use the Latin word meant blessed bread.^[11] In the 17th century it still meant a ship's biscuit: biscotto o buccellato in Manetti's account of the Muscovites.^[11][13]

Tommaseo explains how buccellato came to mean any round bread and especially sweet ones.^[14] The LEI records the round bread from 1704, and the dialects of the south use the word for many breads and focaccias in a ring.^[3] In Lucca it became the ring cake with raisins and aniseed, and in Sicily a Christmas cake filled with dried figs.^[13][7][12] Montale writes of the smell of buccellati from the ovens.^[11][8]

Pirandello uses pan buccellato for a crown of small loaves.^[11] In nautical language it was also a ring on the boom of a studding sail.^[13]

Timeline

• 4th century – Ammianus Marcellinus uses Late Latin buccellātum for army bread.^[4][3]
• 13th century – Medieval Latin bozolatus is recorded in northern Italy.^[4]
• Before 1342 – Cavalca uses buccellati in the Dialogo di San Gregorio.^[2][6]
• About 1350 – Ligurian bucelati appears in another version of the same text.^[3]
• 1554 – Bocciolato is recorded in Minerbi.^[5]
• 1681 – The spelling buccellato is in Veneroni's dictionary.^[3]
• 1704 – Buccellato is recorded for a ring-shaped bread.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sweet ring cake of leavened dough with raisins and aniseed, a speciality of Lucca.^{[6][7][10][15]}
2. A Sicilian Christmas cake filled with dried figs.^[7][12]
3. (dated) A kind of biscuit; a ring-shaped bread.^[11][3]

Word family

• buccellatino

Related words

• buccella
• bocca
• bozzolaro
• Latin buccellatum

Usage notes

Pan buccellato is bread made as a crown of small rolls.^[11] The diminutive is buccellatino.^[10][11] Buccellato is also a surname, from the cake, for a baker.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 7, 1361
4. ^ a b c d e f g Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 622
5. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 185
6. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 70
10. ^ 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)
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b c Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli