casella

Forms

casella f (plural caselle)^[1] Old Italian forms include casela, chasella and the northern chaxella.^[2] In the south it is Sicilian casedda and casella.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin casella (“small house”), a diminutive of casula (“hut, cottage”), itself a diminutive of Latin casa (“hut; country house”).^[4][1][5] Most dictionaries derive it directly from the latter.^[6][7][8] The Late Latin word is attested in the 6th century,^[3] and in Medieval Latin documents of Italy at Padua in 968 and at Farfa in the 11th century.^[9]

The word continued in Old Occitan casela (“hut”), Catalan casella, Old Spanish casiella (modern Spanish casilla) and Old Galician-Portuguese casela.^[3][10] DEI considers it a word of the Italian and Spanish area.^[9] In Calabria it means a place for drying chestnuts, and in Logudorese Sardinian it is used for the honeycomb.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Andrea da Grosseto's translation of Albertano da Brescia (1268), with the sense of a small, modest house.^[2][3] A Florentine translation of Livy asks whether, if no better house could be built than la piccola casella, ove Romolo nostro padre abitò (“the little house where Romulus our father lived”), it would not be better to live in straw huts than to go into exile.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “small house” was in use in the 14th and 15th centuries and is now obsolete.^[6][5] From it came the cell of bees, wasps and other insects,^[4][12] the compartment of an ovary or a seed pod in botany,^[4][12] and the compartment of a piece of furniture.^[6] Florio recorded “small compartment” in 1563, and the space marked out by crossing lines on paper is recorded in 1600.^[6] Printers used the word for each compartment of the type case.^[8]

Later uses include the casella postale, a numbered post-office box, and later the electronic mailbox (casella di posta elettronica) and the voice mailbox (casella vocale).^[13][8] The word also names the squares of a chessboard or a board game,^[5][13] the evaporating and salt-depositing pans of a saltworks,^[12][8] a refractory container in which ceramics are fired away from the flame,^[5][12] and in linguistics the place a phoneme occupies in the system.^[8][14]

Timeline

• 968 – Medieval Latin casella is recorded at Padua.^[9]
• 1268 – Casella “small house” appears in Andrea da Grosseto.^[2]
• 1311 – Venetian casella appears in a will.^[3]
• 1563 – Florio records casella “small compartment”.^[6]
• 1600 – Casella “space marked by crossing lines” appears in a report from Verona.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pigeonhole or compartment of a shelf, a drawer or a piece of furniture: casella postale, a post-office box.^[5][13][8] (computing) casella di posta elettronica, an electronic mailbox.^[5][13][8]
2. A box or square on paper formed by crossing lines: le caselle di un modulo.^[5][13][15]
3. A square of a chessboard or of a board game.^[5][13][12]
4. A saggar: a refractory container used to fire objects in an industrial kiln away from the flame.^[5][15][12]
5. (salt-making) casella salante or evaporante, a pan of a saltworks where sea water evaporates and the salt is deposited.^[13][8][12]
6. (botany) A compartment of an ovary or a fruit; loculo.^[5][12]
7. (linguistics) The slot a phoneme occupies in a sound system.^[8][14]
8. (archaic) A cell of bees, wasps or other insects.^[5][15][12]
9. (archaic) A small house.^[5][15][12]

Word family

• casellario
• casellista
• incasellare

Related words

• casa
• Spanish casilla

Usage notes

The ⟨s⟩ is pronounced either /z/ or /s/.^[1][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 12, 1020
4. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 791
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
14. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse