crettare

Forms

crettare (first-person singular present crètto or crétto, first-person singular past historic crettài, past participle crettàto, auxiliary èssere)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crepitāre (“to crackle”), the popular outcome of the Latin verb beside the learned doublet crepitare.^[2][1][3][4] The unstressed vowel before the stress was lost and /pt/ became /tt/, as is regular.^[5] The sense moved from crackling to splitting open.^[2] The same verb gave Spanish grietarse and Portuguese gretar, with the nouns grieta and greta “crack”.^[2][6][7] Meyer-Lübke adds Old French crette and an Abruzzese word for a crack in walls or in the ground.^[6]

Crepitāre is the frequentative of crepō (“to make a sharp noise”).^[8] De Vaan traces that verb to Proto-Indo-European *ḱrep- (“to rattle, crackle”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is a Tuscan, and especially Sienese, word that the dictionaries record only from the 19th century: Fanfani and Petrocchi have it in the sense “to crack, to chap”.^[10][2][11] GRADIT and Zingarelli date it before 1903.^[3][4] The noun cretto, “crack”, is much older, from the 17th century, and is already in Oudin.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

Rigutini, in the Tommaseo–Rigutini dictionary, explained that crettare is said of walls when they split more or less deeply, and that cretto is the crack.^[12] The word is also used of skin that chaps in the cold and wind, especially from chilblains.^[4][13][14] It is mostly found as the pronominal crettarsi or as the past participle crettato.^[13][12]

Timeline

• 1600s – The noun cretto “crack” is recorded.^[2]
• 1800s – Fanfani and Petrocchi record the Tuscan verb crettare.^[10][2][11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (Tuscany, intransitive, auxiliary essere) To crack, to split, said of walls, plaster and painted surfaces: col terremoto la facciata si è crettata.^{[11][4][13][1]}
2. (Tuscany, intransitive) Of skin, to chap in the cold and wind.^[4][13][1]

Word family

• cretto
• crettatura

Related words

• crepitare
• crepare
• Latin crepitō

Usage notes

The verb is regional (Tuscan) and of low frequency; it is used mostly in the pronominal form crettarsi.^[3][11][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 123
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. ^ a b c Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 348
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 3, 968
13. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli