colombo

Forms

colombo m (plural colombi, diminutive colombino)^[1] Old spellings include Old Italian colonbo, Old Italian columbo and Old Italian collunbo.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin columbus (“male pigeon”), the masculine beside columba (“pigeon, dove”), which gave colomba.^[3][4][5][1] Varro explains that once both sexes were called by the feminine, and that the masculine was formed when the birds were kept at home.^[6] The feminine is the commoner form in Latin, whatever the bird's sex.^[7]

The Latin words survive in most Romance languages: Old French colomb, French colombe, Catalan colom and coloma, Friulian colomp.^[4][7] Welsh borrowed the word as Welsh colomen.^[8][9] In central and southern Italy the word was replaced by continuations of palumbus.^[7][9]

Nocentini and de Vaan compare Ancient Greek κόλυμβος (kólymbos, “small diving bird”), the source of colimbo, and Old Church Slavonic голѫбь (golǫbĭ, “pigeon, dove”).^[4][10] The Slavic forms point to a colour word for “blue”, and Nocentini thinks the bird was named after its grey-blue plumage.^[10][4] De Vaan notes that the Latin word would need an irregular change of its first consonant to be cognate with these.^[10] DEI sees it as a Mediterranean word taken into Latin and into Greek independently, and the Slavic word perhaps as a loan from Latin.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Florentine document of 1287.^[2] DELI's is in Bono Giamboni, before 1292.^[3] The word named the pigeon, a tame bird often kept by people.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already distinguished kinds of pigeon, such as the colombo grosso and terraiuolo.^[11] Brunetto Latini's Tesoro says that pigeons have no gall and weep in place of singing, and Dante's Paradiso has a pigeon settling beside its mate.^[11] The rock dove is the colombo torraiolo, named for nesting in towers, and the bird that carries messages the colombo viaggiatore.^[12][13]

In ordinary speech piccione has become the usual word for the bird, while colombo is preferred in figurative uses.^[12] Since Carlo Dossi in 1880 the plural colombi has named a pair of lovers, and un colombo is a simple, innocent person.^[3][5] A colombo di gesso, from the plaster pigeon set outside a dovecote to lure birds, is someone who sits silent in a conversation.^[12] A Tuscan proverb, colombo pasciuto, ciliegia amara, says that whoever has plenty of something cannot enjoy it.^[11]

Timeline

• 1287 – A Florentine document has the earliest record.^[2]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses colombo.^[3]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses the feminine colomba.^[3]
• 1880 – Carlo Dossi uses the plural for a pair of lovers.^[3]
• 1887 – Colombicoltura, the breeding of pigeons, is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. pigeon, dove; especially the domestic pigeon: Un colombo si posò sul davanzale.^[5][13][12]
2. (zoology) The common name of many birds of the family Columbidae.^[5][13][14]
3. (figurative, in the plural) A pair of lovers, often ironically: Quei due colombi non si staccano mai.^[5][15][14]
4. (figurative) A simple, innocent or naive person.^[5][12]

Word family

• colomba
• colombaccio
• colombaia
• colombario
• colombella
• colombina
• colombino
• colombicoltura
• colombicoltore

Related words

• piccione
• palombo
• colimbo
• Latin columba

Usage notes

Colombo has two minor homographs.^[5] One is the eagle ray (Myliobatis aquila), a name used mainly in the Veneto and the upper Adriatic since 1563, from the pigeon because the fish looks like a bird with spread wings.^[5][6][12] The other, recorded from 1865, is a climbing plant of south-eastern Africa (Iatrorrhiza palmata) whose bitter root is used in medicine.^[6][13] GRADIT and GDLI derive it from calumba, the root's name.^[5][6] Zingarelli says it was named after Colombo in Ceylon, where it was thought to come from, and Devoto–Oli thinks it may come from a Mozambique word.^[14][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 e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ 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. 3, 306
7. ^ a b c Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 15, 1126
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1019
10. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse