cancello

Forms

cancello m (plural cancelli)^[1] Early forms include cancella, canciello and chancello.^[2] Buonarroti the Younger and Lippi wrote the shortened cancel in the 17th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cancellī (“lattice, railing, barrier”), a Latin plural with the sense “lattice, grating, barrier”.^[4][5][6][1] Cicero uses the word only in the plural; the singular appears first in the Itala, the Old Latin Bible, for the screen in front of the altar.^[3][7]

The same word is Old French chancel, Old Occitan cansel, Catalan cancell, Spanish cancel and Portuguese cancelo.^[5][8][3] It is found in all the Romance languages except Romanian, and in the dialects it often took rural senses, such as an Alpine pen for kids.^[7][8] The church sense passed through Old French into English chancel, and the Latin singular gave German Kanzel (“pulpit”).^[7][8][3]

The Latin word is a diminutive of cancrī (“lattice, trellis”), a word recorded only by the antiquarians (Paul the Deacon's epitome of Festus).^[4][5][9] That word is a dissimilated form of Latin carcer (“prison; barrier”), with the second ⟨r⟩ changed to ⟨n⟩.^{[5][6][7][10]} It came to sound the same as the word for “crab”, and the diminutive early replaced it.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Miracole de Roma, a Roman text of the mid-13th century, for a structure of poles or bars closing the entrance to an enclosure.^[2] Ricordano Malispini, at the end of the 13th century, tells of an old gate that had closed the lions' pen in Florence being carried off to a private villa.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian also used the word for the screen closing off the iconostasis in a church, for an enclosure in general, and in the phrase tornare a cancello, to come back to the main subject after a digression.^[2] The collective cancellata, a railing or fence made of a row of such bars, is recorded from 1296.^[5][4]

Dialects keep many of the older rural senses: Ticinese and Lombard forms name a pen in the stable for kids, and in the south a basket or a measure.^[7][8][3] In the 20th century the word was extended to the lanes of a motorway toll station, the gate of an airport and an obstacle in show jumping.^[6][12][13]

Timeline

• Mid-13th century – cancello appears in the Roman Miracole de Roma.^[2][5]
• 1289 – the date Zingarelli gives for the first record.^[13]
• Late 13th century – Ricordano Malispini uses it for the gate of the lions' pen in Florence.^[4][3]
• 1296 – the derivative cancellata is recorded.^[5]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani repeats the story of the old gate in his chronicle.^[11]
• Before 1646 – Buonarroti the Younger writes the short form cancel.^[3]
• 20th century – a second cancello, the cancellation of a charter contract, enters maritime language.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A gate: a movable structure of iron or wooden bars closing an entrance or passage, as to a garden or a villa: Il cancello dell'orto era aperto.^[6][12][14]
2. Each of the lanes of a casello where motorway tolls are paid.^[6][12][13]
3. At an airport, a boarding gate.^[6][12]
4. (heraldry) A figure made of crossed bars.^[6][15]
5. (equestrianism) A kind of obstacle used in show jumping.^[6][12][13]

Word family

• cancellata
• cancellato
• cancelletto

Related words

• carcere
• cancellare
• Latin cancellus
• Latin carcer
• English chancel

Usage notes

In law, vendita a cancello chiuso is the sale of a farm together with its livestock and equipment, without an inventory or valuation.^[12][15][13]

A separate cancello of the 20th century, a technical term of maritime trade, is the cancellation of a charter contract when the merchant ship does not reach the loading port by the agreed date; it is formed from cancellare on the model of English cancelling.^[6][15][16] An obsolete cancello “small crab”, from Latin cancellus as a diminutive of cancer “crab”, is found in Mattioli's Dioscorides.^[16]

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 Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 10, 640
4. ^ a b c d e Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 714
8. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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, 619
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
16. ^ 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, 620