catello

Forms

catello m (plural catelli)^[1] Old Italian catel is an old variant, and Old Venetian has caëlo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin catellus (“puppy”), a diminutive of catulus (“young animal, puppy”).^{[4][5][6][1][7]} The Latin word lives on in all the Romance languages except the Romansh of the Grisons: Romanian cățel “puppy”, Old French chael, French chiot, Old Occitan cadel, Catalan cadell and Spanish cadillo.^[3][8][9]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic *kat-elo- and compares Umbrian katel, the name of a sacrificial animal.^[10] Similar forms exist in Germanic and Slavic, but he finds an Indo-European origin unlikely.^[10] Devoto found no reliable relatives outside Italy.^[11] Prati and the Italian Wiktionary derive catulus from catus (“cat”).^[12][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Bonagiunta Orbicciani of Lucca, in the mid-13th century, with the sense “puppy”: catel battuto fa leon temente (“a beaten puppy makes the lion afraid”).^[2][14][4]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian also used the word for the young of other animals, as in catello del leone, a lion cub.^[2] A Bible translation speaks of li catelli de' leoni rugghianti (“the roaring lions' whelps”), and Villani writes that lions are born dead and then come alive.^[14] Tommaseo already marked the word as obsolete; today's dictionaries call it literary.^[15][16][17]

The diminutive catellino goes back to the 14th century.^[18] Sacchetti's catellon catellone (“stealthily, softly”) is an augmentative of catello, alluding to a dog creeping up on its prey.^[18][12][14] In some central and southern dialects the word names the spiny burr of the burdock, a shift also found in French and Spanish dialects.^[18][8]

Timeline

• Before 1257 – Bonagiunta Orbicciani uses catel.^[4][2]
• Before 1292 – Giamboni's translation of Orosius has catello.^[3]
• 14th century – The diminutive catellino is recorded.^[18]
• c. 1388 – A Tuscan translation of Aesop uses the word.^[3]
• c. 1400 – Sacchetti uses catalone catalone “stealthily”.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) A puppy, a little dog.^[4][5][16]
2. (literary, by extension) The young of another animal, a cub or whelp.^[4][17][6]

Word family

• catellino
• catelloni

Related words

• Latin catellus

Usage notes

GRADIT marks the word obsolete, while Devoto–Oli, Sabatini–Coletti and Zingarelli label it literary.^{[4][16][17][5]} DEI lists three minor words of the same spelling: a mechanical catello, the pin of a bar or the bolt of a latch, probably the same Latin word crossed with Late Latin catella (“small chain”).^[18] A 16th-century catello, a kind of camp bed, is adapted from Portuguese catre.^[18] An old catéllo, a large piece of stone or metal, is of obscure origin.^[18][19][20] Catello is also a man's name, from the Late Latin personal name Catellus, found mainly around the Gulf of Naples through the cult of a bishop saint of Castellammare di Stabia.^[13]

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 Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 12, 1450
4. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
13. ^ a b Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org
14. ^ 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, p. 2, 876
15. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
16. ^ 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
17. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
18. ^ a b c d e f g Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 811
19. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 815
20. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 2, 883