carnoso

Forms

carnoso (feminine carnosa, masculine plural carnosi, feminine plural carnose)^[1] Early forms include Old Italian carnuso and Old Italian charnosi (plural), and Old Sicilian has carnusu.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin carnōsus (“fleshy”), formed from carō (“flesh”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[3][4][5][1] Zingarelli and GDLI call it a learned word, while Wiktionary treats it as inherited.^[3][4][1] The LEI finds the question hard to decide: Meyer-Lübke took the Romance forms as inherited because of Romanian cărnos, Wartburg took Old French charneus as a learned word of medicine, and the Italian forms appear mostly in translations from Latin from the 13th century on.^[6] By surface analysis it is carne with -oso.^[1]

The same word is Old Occitan carnos, Catalan carnós, Spanish carnoso and Portuguese carnoso.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Bono Giamboni's Florentine translation of Vegetius, before 1292, with the sense “abounding in flesh”.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the word for plump people and animals, for things made of flesh, and in medicine for muscle tissue.^[2] In physiognomy a fleshy face was a bad sign: Bencivenni wrote in 1310 that a man il quale avrae il volto troppo pieno e troppo carnoso fia di picciolo savere (“whose face is too full and too fleshy will have little wisdom”).^[8][6]

DELI dates the sense “made of flesh” to 1585 in Tommaso Garzoni and the sense “rich in pulp and juice”, of fruit, to before 1597 in Giovan Vettorio Soderini.^[9] The botanical sense of leaves and stems swollen with water belongs to the modern dictionaries, and zoology uses Carnosi for an order of sponges.^[10][11]

Timeline

• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni's Vegetius has the word.^[2][6]
• 1310 – Bencivenni speaks of a volto carnoso, a fleshy face.^[6]
• c. 1350 – The Italian Crescenzi uses it for plump people.^[9][6]
• 1585 – Tommaso Garzoni uses it for “made of flesh”.^[9]
• Before 1597 – Giovan Vettorio Soderini uses it of pulpy fruit.^[9]
• 1687 – Malpighi writes of the ventricolo carnoso of hens.^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a part of the body: fleshy, full and firm: labbra carnose, full lips.^{[10][11][12][1]}
2. (botany) Of a fruit, leaf or stem: thick and soft, full of pulp or of water-storing tissue.^{[10][11][12][13]}
3. Made of flesh; carneo.^[10][3][14]

Noun

1. (zoology) A sponge of the order Carnosi, with a star-shaped skeleton.^[10]

Word family

• carnosità

Related words

• carne
• carneo
• Latin carnosus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 12, 239
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 2, 788
9. ^ a b c d Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli