erba

Forms

erba f (plural erbe)^[1] The Latinizing spelling herba is also found.^[1] In the dialects the word is Neapolitan errewe in Naples and Sardinian erva in Logudorese Sardinian.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin herba (“grass, herb, small plant”).^[3][4][5][1] The word is panromance: the same Latin noun gave French herbe, Occitan erba, Catalan erba, Spanish hierba, Portuguese erva, Sardinian erva and Romanian iarbă.^[4][2][6] Its learned derivatives erbaceo, erbario and erboso were taken later from Latin herbāceus, Late Latin herbārium and Latin herbōsus.^[3][4]

The origin of Latin “herba” is uncertain.^[3][5] Nocentini and Wiktionary follow the traditional view, which traces it to the root Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- (“to grow, become green”), the root of English grass and English green.^[4][1] De Vaan rejects the reconstruction “*gher-dh-” behind this view, because the root of Latin grāmen (“grass”) would have to be different, and finds no other explanation.^[7][1] The Oxford Latin Dictionary, by contrast, compares Old English græd (“grass”).^[8] Devoto saw no Indo-European connection and thought of a Mediterranean stem, and DEI and the GDLI treat the word as a relic of a pre-Latin rural language.^[9][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Canticle of the Creatures of Francis of Assisi, of about 1224, which praises Mother Earth who brings forth “various fruits with coloured flowers and grass” (diversi fructi con coloriti fiori et erba): here the word means a low plant with a green, never woody stem.^[3][5][11]

Semantic evolution

By the end of the 13th century the Novellino uses the word for the grass that covers a field or meadow as a whole, and in 1344 the plural erbe is recorded for vegetables, the sense kept in the piazza delle erbe, the fruit and vegetable market of many towns.^[3][12][5] The old proverbial phrase fare d'ogni erba un fascio, “to make one bundle of every herb”, that is, to lump together things that should be kept apart, has found new use in political language.^[3][12] Popular plant names formed with erba are very numerous: DEI counts about 2,500 in the dialects.^[10]

Tommaseo separated erba, the plants of fields and meadows, from erbaggio, the plants of the kitchen garden, noting that erba could stand for erbaggio but not the other way round.^[13] The phrase in erba came to describe someone at the beginning of a career, a doctor or painter still in training.^[12][14] In 1971 the Corriere della Sera recorded erba in drug users' slang for marijuana.^[3][15]

Several derivatives were shaped by French: erborista and erboristeria follow French herboriste and herboristerie, and erbivendolo was coined on the model of fruttivendolo.^[3][4] English used the Latinizing form herba from 1692 for a silk-like fabric first imported from India.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1224 – Francis of Assisi uses erba in the Canticle of the Creatures.^[3][5]
• Late 13th century – The Novellino uses the word for the grass of a field.^[3]
• 1280–1310 – The derivative erbaggio “edible herb” appears in the Fiore.^[3]
• 1344 – The plural erbe is recorded for vegetables.^[3]
• 1544 – Mattioli uses herbario for a book on medicinal plants.^[3]
• 1692 – English herba is recorded as the name of a fabric.^[16]
• 1835 – Erbivendolo, a seller of vegetables, is first recorded according to Nocentini (1853 in DELI).^[4][3]
• 1956 – Erbicida “herbicide” enters the dictionaries.^[3]
• 1971 – Erba is recorded in the sense “marijuana”.^[3][15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A low plant with a soft, non-woody stem, usually green: Tra le pietre crescevano erbe selvatiche.^[5][17][15]
2. grass: the herbaceous plants growing on a piece of ground, and the ground they cover: I bambini giocavano sull'erba del giardino.^[5][15][12]
3. (chiefly in the plural) Vegetables and greens; also aromatic herbs used in cooking or medicine: Ho comprato le erbe al mercato.^[5][15][14]
4. (slang) marijuana.^[5][15][1]
5. (botany) With a qualifier, the name of many particular plants: erba cipollina (chives), erba medica (lucerne).^[17][12][1]

Adjective

1. (invariable, after a colour word) Grass-green: verde erba.^[5][12]

Word family

• diserbare
• erbaccia
• erbaceo
• erbario
• erbicida
• erbivoro
• erborista
• erboristeria
• erboso
• erbaggio
• erbaio
• erbaiolo
• erbivendolo
• erborare
• erbetta
• malerba
• erba cipollina
• erba medica

Related words

• diserbante
• tagliaerba
• tosaerba
• Latin herba
• French herbe

Usage notes

Common set phrases are in erba “budding, in the making” (un pittore in erba), fare d'ogni erba un fascio “to lump everything together”, and the proverb l'erba voglio non cresce neanche nel giardino del re, said to someone who asks for something with “I want”.^[12][14] Places where ci cresce l'erba are abandoned.^[5][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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 e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1508
11. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 5, 225
12. ^ a b c d e f g Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b c d Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
17. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier