cintura

Forms

cintura f (plural cinture)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian centura, Old Italian cientura, Old Italian chintura and Old Italian zentura.^[2] The type with /e/ lives on in the north: Piedmontese sentura, Genoese sentüa and old Milanese zentura (1697–1699).^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cinctūra (“girding; girdle”), a noun from cingō (“to gird, surround”), through its past participle cinctus, with the suffix -ūra.^[4][5][6][1] Quintilian uses the Latin word.^[7][8]

It lives on in most of Romance, though not in Romanian, Romansh or Sardinian: Old French ceingture (early 12th century) and French ceinture, Old Occitan centura, Catalan cintura, Spanish cintura and Portuguese cintura.^[3][5][9]

The regular outcome kept the unstressed /e/, the type centura of the old texts and the northern dialects; ⟨cintura⟩ is the Florentine development of /e/ before a nasal, or a form spread from Tuscany, while in Sicily and southern Calabria every unstressed /e/ became /i/.^[3] A Latinate ⟨cinctura⟩ is recorded in the 15th century in the Marche, and Florentine ⟨sainture⟩ in the 14th century is a borrowing from French.^[3] For cingō de Vaan gives only a doubtful Proto-Italic *keng-.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Garzo, about 1225, for the strip of leather or cloth worn to fasten clothes at the waist.^[4] The TLIO's first record is the Roman Storie de Troia e de Roma (1252–1258), with the same sense.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word also named the cord of friars, the belt given to a knight when he was dubbed, the chastity belt, a horse's girth, a strip of land, and anything that surrounds something.^[2] Dante writes of a time when there was non cintura / che fosse a veder più che la persona (“no girdle more worth seeing than the person wearing it”).^[11][8] The sense ‘waist’ is in Boccaccio (1353).^[4] Tommaseo records the Tuscan proverb tutte le chiavi non pendono a una cintura (“not all keys hang from one belt”: no one can do everything alone).^[8]

cinturino ‘small belt’ is first recorded before 1639 in Campanella; cinturone, the heavy belt for a holster or cartridge pouches, appears before 1764, and in this military sense the LEI takes it from French ceinturon.^[4][3] The modern cintura verde is a calque of the English greenbelt.^[3] The coloured belt of judo is recorded in 1963, and cinturato was the trade name of a tyre in 1952.^[4][5] Today the word also names the seat belt, the championship belt of boxing, and the ring of towns around a large city.^[12][13][14]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – Garzo uses cintura for a belt.^[4]
• 1252–1258 – The Storie de Troia e de Roma use it.^[2]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses it for anything that surrounds.^[4]
• 1353 – Boccaccio uses it for the waist.^[4]
• Before 1639 – Cinturino in T. Campanella.^[4]
• Before 1764 – Centurone in F. Algarotti;^[4] cinturone follows in 1824.^[4]
• 1952 – Cinturato, the trade name of a tyre.^[5]
• 1963 – The judo belt is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A belt, girdle: a strip of leather, cloth or other material worn round the waist to hold up clothes or as an ornament: Si è comprato una cintura di cuoio nero.^[12][15][13]
2. The waistband of trousers, a skirt or a dress.^[12][13][16]
3. The waist, the part of the body where a belt is worn; in boxing, the line below which punches are forbidden.^[12][16][17]
4. A seat belt (cintura di sicurezza).^[12][15][16]
5. (judo, karate) The belt whose colour shows the athlete's grade; also the athlete: È diventata cintura nera a sedici anni.^[12][13][16]
6. (boxing) The decorated belt awarded to a world champion; the title itself.^[12]
7. (figurative) A ring of something around a place; the zone around a large city: un paese della cintura torinese.^[12][13][14]
8. (anatomy) A girdle of bones joining the limbs to the trunk (cintura pelvica, cintura scapolare).^[13][12]
9. (wrestling) A hold round the opponent's waist.^[13][14]

Word family

• cinturino
• cinturone
• cinturato
• cinturare
• incinturato

Related words

• cingere
• cinto
• cinta
• cintola
• Latin cinctura
• French ceinture

Usage notes

Cintura di castità is the chastity belt, cintura di salvataggio a life belt.^[15][16][14] Essere stretto or largo di cintura means to have a narrow or broad waist.^[16][18]

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 e f Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 14, 262
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 949
8. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b c d e f g Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ 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
16. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
17. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
18. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli