cerasa

Forms

cerasa f (plural cerase)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian ceragia, Old Italian cerasia, Old Italian cerese and Old Italian chirasa.^[2] Lucca has ceràgia and Siena saràgia.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin cerasia, the neuter plural of cerasium (“cherry”) taken as a feminine singular, as Devoto–Oli, Zingarelli and Sabatini–Coletti explain it.^[4][5][6] DEI, GDLI, the TLIO and Meyer-Lübke start instead from an adjective form Late Latin *cerasea, and GRADIT gives both.^{[7][8][9][10]} Zingarelli and Sabatini–Coletti add that the vowels were influenced by cerasum, the classical name of the fruit.^[5][6] The tree was Latin cerasus (“cherry tree”) is from Ancient Greek κερασός (kerasós), and cerasium is Ancient Greek κεράσιον (kerásion, “cherry”), its diminutive.^[1][11][12]

The central and southern dialects continue the type with ⟨a⟩, as this word does; the north continues Vulgar Latin ceresia, with ⟨e⟩, which reached Florence and gave standard ciliegia.^[13][14] The ⟨a⟩ type is Sicilian cirasa and Corsican carasa, while the ⟨e⟩ type is French cerise, Spanish cereza, Portuguese cereja and Romanian cireașă.^[9][13]

The Greek word is thought to come from a language of Asia Minor.^[5][1] The cherry tree was brought to Italy from Pontus in the 1st century BC, by Lucullus according to Soderini, but Nocentini notes that wild cherries already grew in Greece and Italy.^[13][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record of the word is in the Sienese accounts of Mattasalà, of 1233–1243, for the fruit of the cherry tree.^[2] DEI notes an earlier record at Rome in 1011.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word named the cherry, and cerasa amarena the sour cherry.^[2] In Tuscany the northern type ciriegia, later ciliegia, became the literary word, while cerasa survived around Lucca and Pisa and in central and southern Italy.^[14][13][3] Writers of the 16th and 17th centuries still used it: Castiglione writes of women who competed for a man's love as children do for cerase, and Redi recommends a plate of fresh cerase against fever.^[8][15]

Tommaseo records cerasa as a dyers' name for a reddish colour made with safflower.^[15] In Rome cerase marine are the fruits of the strawberry tree.^[3] The dictionaries now mark the word as regional, central and southern.^[10][4][5]

Timeline

• 1233–1243 – Mattasalà's Sienese accounts have the earliest Italian record.^[2]
• Before 1529 – The word appears in Castiglione.^[10][8]

Meanings

Noun

1. (regional, central and southern Italy) cherry, the fruit of the cherry tree; standard Italian ciliegia.^{[10][4][5][1]}

Word family

• cerasella
• cerasuolo

Related words

• ciliegia
• ciliegio
• Latin cerasus

Usage notes

Devoto–Oli allows the ⟨s⟩ to be pronounced either voiceless or voiced.^[4] Tommaseo already noted that ciliegia was the more common word in Tuscany.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 267
4. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 861
8. ^ 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, 985
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET