crudo

Forms

crudo (feminine cruda, masculine plural crudi, feminine plural crude)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian crua, Old Italian cruo, Old Italian crudho and Old Italian crudu.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crūdus (“bleeding; raw; cruel”).^[3][4][1] DELI and GRADIT give the Latin senses in that order: first “bleeding”, then “raw” and “cruel”.^[5][4] DELI treats the word as learned, together with the derivatives Latin crūdēlis (“cruel”) and crūdēlitās (“cruelty”), which lie behind crudele and crudeltà.^[5] Nocentini and Meyer-Lübke, however, list it among the words found in every Romance language: French cru, Occitan cru, Catalan cru, Spanish crudo, Portuguese cru, Sardinian cru, Romanian crud and Vegliote kroit.^[3][6]

The Latin adjective belongs with cruor (“blood”).^[5][3][7] Nocentini traces both to a root Proto-Indo-European *kreu- “bloody flesh”, first used of raw meat, which also gave Ancient Greek κρέας (kréas, “flesh, meat”).^[3] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *krowoþo- and, with a question mark, *kreuh₂-odʰ-o- (“raw”), on the pattern of one reconstruction of nūdus (“naked”); he finds the older explanation, a dissimilation of *kruh₂-ro-, unusual and unsupported.^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Proverbia que dicuntur, a Venetian text of the last quarter of the 12th century.^[2] The first sense DELI dates, “not cooked, not exposed to fire or heat”, is from Brunetto Latini, before 1294,^[5] whose Rettorica tells of early people who lived like beasts and ate raw meat and raw herbs (carne cruda, erbe crude).^[8]

Semantic evolution

From food the word spread to anything not yet worked by heat or craft: cloth not boiled, hides not tanned, materials not fired.^[2] Medieval medicine used it of food and humours that had not been digested.^[2] By 1310–1312 Dino Compagni used it for a harsh, pitiless person, and around 1344 Boccaccio used it of a cold, inclement season.^[5] The TLIO also records “uncivilised, wild, rough”, the phrase nudo e crudo for extreme poverty, and cruda as a noun for a drunken bout.^[2] Dante's nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno (“on the harsh rock between the Tiber and the Arno”) shows the sense “wild, rugged” of places.^[4]

Derivatives followed: crudezza in Boccaccio (before 1375), then incrudire in the 16th century and rincrudire in the 17th.^[5][3] In the old thieves' cant cruda meant “death”.^[9] Today the figurative senses (“blunt”, “glaring”, “grating”) sit beside the literal “raw”, and crudo is also used of hard water.^[4][10]

Timeline

• 1175–1200 – The Proverbia que dicuntur have the first record.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses it for uncooked food.^[5]
• 1310–1312 – Dino Compagni uses it for “harsh, pitiless”.^[5]
• c. 1344 – Boccaccio uses it of a cold, inclement season.^[5]
• Before 1375 – Crudezza appears in Boccaccio.^[5]
• 16th century – Incrudire is recorded.^[3]
• 17th century – Rincrudire is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. raw, not cooked, or not cooked enough: Il riso è ancora crudo, lascialo bollire.^[4][11][12]
2. Of materials, not processed or refined: silk that has not been boiled, leather that has not been tanned, sun-dried bricks, unrefined metal.^[4][11][13]
3. (uncommon) unripe; of wine, not yet aged.^[4][11]
4. Of water, hard, rich in mineral salts.^[10][14]
5. Of weather or a season, cold and inclement.^[4][11]
6. (literary) Of a place, wild and rugged.^[4][11]
7. (figurative) Blunt, harsh, not softened by tact: Gli disse i fatti nudi e crudi..^[4][11][15]
8. Of colours or light, glaring; of sounds, grating.^[4][11]
9. (literary) cruel, pitiless.^[4][15]

Word family

• crudezza
• crudità
• incrudire
• rincrudire
• crudamente
• crudista

Related words

• crudele
• crudeltà
• recrudescenza
• cruore
• Latin crūdus
• French cru

Usage notes

Di cotte e di crude means “all kinds of things”, mostly bad or odd ones, as in farne di cotte e di crude.^[12][13] Prosciutto crudo is cured, uncooked ham, as opposed to prosciutto cotto.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
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. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
9. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 353
10. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse