cavallo

Forms

cavallo m (plural cavalli, feminine cavalla, diminutive cavallìno or (only in specific meanings) cavallétto, augmentative cavallóne or cavallòtto, pejorative cavallàccio, endearing-derogatory cavallùccio)^[1] Old Italian has caval and the old plural cavagli, still listed as archaic, and northern texts have cavalo (Old Genoese, Venetian) and caval (Old Milanese, Bonvesin).^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin caballus (“workhorse, gelding”).^[5][6][7][8] Classical Latin called the horse equus, an old Indo-European name;^[5][4] “caballus” appears from the 2nd century BC, first in Lucilius, for the draught and work horse, often the gelding, with a disparaging tone, and the grammarians call it a popular word.^[5][4] The Romance languages have no outcome of “equus”, only of “caballus”, though the feminine equa (“mare”) partly survives.^[5][4] The DÉRom reconstructs Vulgar Latin */kaˈβall-u/ for Proto-Romance, probably born in Italy in contact with Greek, and explains its victory over “equus” by the use of the horse as a draught animal in daily work.^[9]

The word is found in every Romance language: French cheval, Catalan cavall, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo, Sardinian caddu, Friulian cjaval, Romanian cal and Vegliote kavúl.^[6][10][4] Irish capall and Welsh ceffyl are early loans from Latin, and Nocentini counts Old Church Slavonic кобыла (kobyla, “mare”) among them, while DEI thinks it entered Slavic independently.^[6][11]

The origin of “caballus” is unknown and disputed.^[6][1] The words Ancient Greek καβάλλης (kabállēs, “nag”), an inscription from Callatis of the 3rd century BC and Hesychius's glosses show an older word in the Balkans;^[12] De Vaan takes the Latin as a loanword too, perhaps from Asia, after Beekes, comparing Persian کول (kaval, “second-class horse of mixed blood”).^[12][1] The LEI thinks it Celtic, with a Gaulish “cabo” “horse” and a suffix, DELI and DEI a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean relic, and Nocentini suggests an ethnic name, as French hongre (“gelding”) is properly “Hungarian”.^{[4][5][11][6]}

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the shortened caval in the Ritmo laurenziano, a Tuscan poem of the late 12th century, and cavallo in a Florentine account book of 1211, both for the animal.^[5][2][7]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the horse marked the rank of the knight: andare a cavallo and essere messo a cavallo expressed the condition of a cavaliere, and cavallo could mean a mounted soldier.^[2] The chess knight is a cavallo before 1449 in Burchiello, the playing card from 1545 in Pietro Aretino (Este cavalo from 1475), the gymnastic vaulting horse in 1895 and the crotch of trousers in 1956.^[5][13] Cavallo vapore “horsepower” came through French cheval-vapeur (1822) from English horse-power.^[5][6]

Proverbs and phrases include a caval donato non si guarda in bocca (don't look a gift horse in the mouth), cavallo di battaglia (an actor's showpiece, one's strongest suit) and a cavallo di due secoli (at the turn of two centuries).^[3][14] In 1472 Ferdinand I of Naples issued a copper coin called cavallo after the horse on its reverse.^[13][11] Recent slang uses cavallo for a small-time drug courier.^[15]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – Caval in the Ritmo laurenziano.^[5][2]
• 1211 – Cavallo in a Florentine account book.^[5][7]
• Before 1449 – The chess knight, in Burchiello.^[5]
• 1472 – The Neapolitan copper coin cavallo.^[13]
• 1545 – The playing card, in Pietro Aretino.^[5]
• 1806 – German Caval for the playing card.^[13]
• 1869 – Cavallo vapore.^[6]
• 1895 – The vaulting horse in gymnastics.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. horse, the large domestic hoofed mammal Equus caballus, used for riding and draught: Da bambino andavo a cavallo tutte le estati.^{[7][16][8][1]}
2. (chess) The knight.^[7][8][1]
3. A figure of the Italian playing cards, a man on horseback.^[7][13]
4. (roulette) A bet on two adjacent numbers.^[7]
5. The crotch of trousers or tights: Questi jeans hanno il cavallo troppo basso.^[7][8][1]
6. (gymnastics) The vaulting horse or pommel horse.^[7][8]
7. (physics) Short for cavallo vapore, horsepower.^[8][1]
8. (slang) A small-time drug pusher or courier.^[15]

Word family

• cavalla
• cavallino
• cavalletta
• cavalletto
• cavallone
• cavalluccio
• cavallaio
• cavalcare
• cavalcata
• cavalcatura
• cavalcavia
• cavalcioni
• cavaliere
• cavalleria
• cavalleresco
• cavalleggero
• accavallare
• scavallare
• cavallo vapore
• cavallo di battaglia

Related words

• caciocavallo
• Latin caballus
• French cheval
• Spanish caballo

Usage notes

The female is cavalla; many derivatives go back to Latin words formed from “caballus”: cavalcare to Late Latin caballicare, cavallino to caballinus.^[5] Cavaliere, from Late Latin caballarius, came to Italian through Old Occitan cavalier, like other feudal words.^[5][10] Cavallerizzo and cavallerizza are Spanish loans.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
4. ^ a b c d e f Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 9, 99
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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 g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 826
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b c d e Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
16. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier