campo

Forms

campo m (plural campi)^[1] An old plural is càmpora.^[2][3] The TLIO's forms include Old Italian canpo and Old Italian chanpo.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin campus (“plain, open country; field”).^[5][6][7][1] The word is found in all the Romance languages: French champ, Occitan camp, Catalan camp, Spanish campo, Portuguese campo, Sardinian campu and Romanian câmp.^[6][8] In Latin it overlapped with ager (“cultivated land”) and took over its place, so that only Romanian and Sardinian still use it for open, untilled plain.^[3][9] As the field of military exercise and of battle it passed into Germanic, as Old High German kampf, whence German Kampf (“battle”).^[6][8][9]

The origin of the Latin word is uncertain.^[5][10] Nocentini compares Ancient Greek καμπή (kampḗ, “bend”) and Lithuanian kampas (“corner”) and starts from a root meaning “to bend”, with “field” reached through “hollow, valley” or “level corner of land”.^[6][1] De Vaan finds the Latin vowel hard to explain and suggests a European substrate word from farming, while DEI and the GDLI think of a Mediterranean relic.^[11][9][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Uguccione da Lodi (early 13th century), in the sense of farmland: whoever has money to lend at usury buys “de la terra, canpi, vigna e closura” (land, fields, vineyards and enclosures).^[5][4][12]

Semantic evolution

Bono Giamboni (before 1292) has the word for a place of battle, exercise or tournament, and Dino Compagni (1310–1312) for an army drawn up for war.^[5] The figurative “field, area, subject” appears before 1327 in Cecco d'Ascoli, the background of a painting in 1436 at Ferrara, and the field of vision in Tommaseo's dictionary (1865).^[5] In Venice a campo is a square, larger than a campiello.^[9][13]

Several phrases follow foreign models: campo di Marte and campo dell'onore copy French, and campo di concentramento renders English concentration camp (1901), from the Boer War; in 1902 the Civiltà cattolica still hesitated between campo di concentramento and campo di concentrazione.^[5] Camposanto “cemetery” may first have meant the potter's field bought with Judas's thirty pieces of silver.^[5] The verb campare “to survive, make a living” (before 1250) meant at first to come out alive from the battlefield, according to Nocentini.^[6][5] Campeggio (1924) follows English camping.^[5] French camp may come from Italian or from Norman-Picard, and French uses campo for an Italian square (1867).^[13]

Timeline

• Early 13th century – Uguccione da Lodi uses canpi for farmland.^[5][4]
• Before 1250 – Giacomo da Lentini uses campare “to escape”.^[5]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses campo for a field of battle.^[5]
• 1310–1312 – Dino Compagni uses it for an army in battle order.^[5]
• Before 1327 – Cecco d'Ascoli uses it for a field of study.^[5]
• 1436 – A Ferrara text uses it for the background of a painting.^[5]
• 1761 – The sense “square” is recorded.^[13]
• 1865 – Tommaseo's dictionary records the field of vision.^[5]
• 1902 – Campo di concentramento appears in the Civiltà cattolica.^[5]
• 1924 – Campeggio is recorded.^[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A field, a piece of land for crops or grazing; in the plural, the countryside: un campo di girasoli.^{[7][14][15][1]}
2. A place of military exercises or battle; a military camp: piantare il campo.^[7][14][16]
3. A camp for refugees, prisoners, workers and the like: campo profughi.^[7][15]
4. A sports ground, pitch or court: campo da tennis.^[7][15][1]
5. (figurative) A field, sphere, domain: È un esperto nel campo dell'energia solare.^[7][15]
6. The background of a painting or relief; in heraldry, the field of a shield.^[15][9][1]
7. (physics) A field of force: campo magnetico.^[15][7]
8. The space taken in by the eye or a lens; in film, a shot: campo lungo.^[15][1]
9. (colloquial) Mobile phone signal: Nel bosco il cellulare non aveva campo.^[1]
10. In Venice, a square.^[15][1]

Word family

• campale
• campare
• campata
• campeggiare
• campeggio
• campestre
• campiello
• camposanto
• scampare
• accampare
• accampamento
• campire
• controcampo

Related words

• campagna
• campesino
• camporella
• Latin campus
• French champ
• German Kampf

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 10, 417
4. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
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 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 709
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 2, 605
13. ^ a b c Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b c d e f g h Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana