cella

Forms

cella f (plural celle)^[1] Old Florentine forms include Old Italian ciella and Old Italian ciela, and Venetian had Old Italian çela.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cella (“small room; storeroom”), a learned word according to DELI, Nocentini and Battisti–Alessio.^[4][5][6] The LEI, however, lists the Old Italian and dialect forms with the inherited words: Old Florentine ciella (“cellar”) (1268), Venetian çela (1315) and Sicilian cedda.^[7] The Latin word lives on in every Romance language except Romanian: Old French celle (the source of English cell), Spanish cilla and Spanish celda, Portuguese cela, Catalan cella and Sardinian kella (“servants' room”), recorded in Old Sardinian.^[7][5]

The Romans connected the word with Latin cēlō (“to hide”), and DELI, Nocentini and Battaglia accept the link.^[4][5][8] De Vaan sees two possible formations from the root Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to hide”): a form *cēla with the vowel shortened before a doubled consonant, or a diminutive.^[9][1] Nocentini compares Old Irish cuile (“cellar”) and Ancient Greek καλιά (kaliá, “hut”).^[5][10] The Latin derivative cellārium (“storeroom”) passed into Germanic as German Keller and English cellar.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The LEI's first record is a Florentine household account of 1268, with ciella for a storeroom or cellar.^[7] The TLIO's first text, Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto (1274), uses cella for one of the three chambers into which the brain was then divided.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word was above all a cellar or larder: the Novellino (late 13th century) has a woman who pretends to go down nella cella.^[4][11] It also named any small enclosed space, the cell of a honeycomb (13th–14th century), and the inner room of an ancient temple, where the image of the god stood (early 14th century).^[4][3] The monk's or nun's cell is recorded before 1342, in Domenico Cavalca.^[4] Petrarch wishes himself sol chiuso in fosca cella, “shut alone in a dark cell”.^[12] The cellar sense is now archaic, though it lived on in the Tuscan countryside in Tommaseo's time.^[13][14]

The prison cell is dated 1838, from the Milanese press.^[4] Technology then made cella a container or device: cella frigorifera, cella fotovoltaica, cella di memoria, and the area served by one mobile phone mast.^[15][14][11] The diminutive cellula became the term of biology after Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665), and in 1925 the cell of a revolutionary party, on the model of Russian usage.^[4]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – Celleraio, the monk in charge of the stores, is recorded.^[4]
• 1268 – Old Florentine ciella “cellar”.^[7]
• 1274 – Brunetto Latini uses cella for a chamber of the brain.^[3]
• Before 1342 – Domenico Cavalca uses it for a monk's cell.^[4]
• Before 1406 – Francesco da Buti uses cellula.^[4]
• 1838 – Cella “prison cell” appears in the Milanese press.^[4]
• 1875 – Cellulare is recorded for the prison van.^[4]
• 1925 – Cellule comuniste, the party cells, appear.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cell, the small bare room of a monk or a nun in a convent.^[15][16][17]
2. A prison cell; by extension, prison: Ha passato la notte in cella.^[15][17]
3. (literary) A quiet, secluded room for study or meditation.^[15][17]
4. Each of the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb.^[15][16][11]
5. (archaeology) The inner room of an ancient temple, which housed the statue of the god.^[15][16][17]
6. (technology) A compartment or device with a particular function: cella frigorifera, a cold store, cella campanaria, the belfry, cella fotovoltaica, a solar cell.^[16][14][18]
7. (computing) A memory cell; a cell of a spreadsheet.^[16][11]
8. (telecommunications) The area served by one transmitter of a mobile phone network.^[15]
9. (archaic) A cellar, a larder.^[15][17][14]

Word family

• cellula
• cellulare
• celleraio
• celletta
• semicella

Related words

• celare
• cantina
• Latin cella
• English cell

Usage notes

A minor homograph, cella, was a silver coin struck at L'Aquila from 1420 and current until 1480; it was named after the eagle on its reverse, through Late Latin aucella “little bird”.^[15][6] In Abruzzo, Molise and Sicily a word of the same origin is a slang name for the genitals.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it
3. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 845
7. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 13, 764
8. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 2, 952
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
12. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ 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
16. ^ a b c d e 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 d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
18. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
19. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET