crine

Forms

crine m (plural crini)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian crin, Old Italian crino, Old Italian crina and northern Old Italian crene.^[2] Old and modern Venetian has crena, with the suffix -ena in place of -ina.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin crinis (“hair of the head”).^[5][6][7][1] DEI classes it as a learned word, and Prati notes that the literary word was much used from the 14th century.^[8][3] The Latin word survives in other Romance languages: French crin, Occitan cri, Catalan cri and Spanish crin.^[6][9]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *kriznis and is usually set beside Latin crista (“crest”), and by de Vaan also Latin crispus (“curly”), as from a stem meaning “crest, plume, hair”.^{[10][6][11][1]} Nocentini traces both to a root Proto-Indo-European *kreis- (“to shake”), which gave Old High German hrīs (“twig, shoot”) (modern German Reis); de Vaan reports the same comparison with the Germanic verbs for “shake”, hair being “what one can shake back and forth”, but finds it possible rather than appealing.^[6][10] Devoto sees no connection beyond the Latin word for “crest”.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur of the last quarter of the 12th century, in the sense “hair of the head”.^[2] DELI's first dates are before 1292 for the hair of a horse's mane or tail (Bono Giamboni) and before 1294 for a human hair (Brunetto Latini).^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word named a single hair, the hair of the head taken together and the mane of a lion or horse; figuratively it was a ray of light, the shining tail of a comet and the top of a mountain.^[2] Dante writes of the season in which “the sun tempers its locks under Aquarius” (’l sole i crin sotto l'Aquario tempra).^[12][13] The sense “mountain crest” is recorded before 1367 in Fazio degli Uberti, and the Tuscan crina kept it: from it came crinale, the ridge line of a mountain chain, recorded in 1865.^[5]

Horsehair as a commercial material for stuffing cushions and mattresses is described in D'Alberti's dictionary of 1797, which also gives the form crino for it.^[5] The human sense became poetic, while the horsehair, the plant fibre used in its place (crine vegetale) and a stiff horsehair cloth used by tailors are the everyday meanings.^[7][14] Criniera, the mane, is a separate loan of French crinière.^[5] English has crine as a rare term from 1614, from Italian or Latin.^[15]

Timeline

• 1175–1200 – Crine appears in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur.^[2]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses it for a hair of a horse's mane or tail.^[5]
• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses it for a human hair.^[5]
• Before 1367 – Fazio degli Uberti uses it for the crest of a mountain.^[5]
• 1614 – English crine is first recorded.^[15]
• 1797 – D'Alberti describes crine or crino as a stuffing material.^[5]
• 1865 – The derivative crinale “ridge line” is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A horsehair: a hair of the mane or tail of a horse or similar animal; collectively, such hair used to stuff cushions and mattresses and to make brushes: un cuscino imbottito di crine.^[7][13][14]
2. Crine vegetale: a fibre from the leaves of certain plants, chiefly palms, used for stuffing and packing.^[13][14][16]
3. (textiles) A stiff horsehair interlining used by tailors to reinforce shoulders and collars.^[7][13][14]
4. (literary) A hair; collectively, the hair of the head, the locks.^[7][12][16]
5. (literary) The shining tail of a comet; a ray of the sun or of a star.^[7][13][12]
6. (Tuscan) The ridge of a mountain, the crinale.^[7][13][14]

Word family

• crina
• crinuto
• scrinare

Related words

• crinale
• criniera
• crinito
• cresta
• Latin crinis
• French crin

Usage notes

Crino is a less common variant, used mainly for horsehair as a material;^[12][14][16] Sabatini–Coletti takes it to be formed from the plural crini.^[12][14][16] Old Italian also had a feminine plural crina.^[16]

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 Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 348
4. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1158
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b 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 Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ a b c d e f 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 d e f g Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
16. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli