crivo

Forms

crivo m (plural crivi)^[1] The Old Italian record from Messina has the Sicilian form Old Italian crivu.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crībrum (“sieve”), through the by-form cribum, which DEI gives as the source and Meyer-Lübke lists among the late variants of the Latin word.^[2][3][1] The word lives on in southern Italy, with Sicilian crivu, and in the west of the Romance area as Spanish cribo and Portuguese crivo.^[3] Other variants of the Latin word gave French crible and the type Lombard kribi, from criblum, and Romanian ciur, from *cibrum.^[3]

The Latin noun is formed with the instrument suffix -brum on the root of cernō (“to sift, separate”).^[4][1] It goes back to Proto-Italic *kreiþro- and Proto-Indo-European *krei-dʰro- (“sieve”), from the root *krey- (“to sieve, separate”).^[5][1] Its cognates include Old Irish críathar and Old English hrīdder, both meaning “sieve”.^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Sicilian of Accurso di Cremona, written at Messina between 1321 and 1337, where crivu means a sieve, the same as crivello.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Tommaseo's dictionary marked crivo as obsolete in the literary language and explained it as a form of crivello, the diminutive that had taken over the sense in Tuscan.^[6] The word itself stayed alive in the south, where Meyer-Lübke recorded krivo and Sicilian krivu.^[3]

Wiktionary also gives the technical sense of a sluice box, the trough used to wash ore.^[1]

Timeline

• 1321–1337 – Accurso di Cremona uses Sicilian crivu at Messina.^[2]
• 1861 – Tommaseo–Bellini lists crivo as an obsolete word for crivello.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sieve or screen: the same as crivello.^[1][2][6]
2. (mining) A sluice box.^[1]

Related words

• crivello
• cribro
• Latin cribrum
• French crible

Usage notes

Crivo is a southern and obsolete word: the standard word for a sieve is crivello, from the Latin diminutive cribellum.^[6][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c d Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET