falciare

Forms

falciare (first-person singular present fàlcio, first-person singular past historic falciài, past participle falciàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian falce + -are, the verb being made from the noun for the sickle or scythe.^[2][3][4][5] Wiktionary instead takes it as inherited from Vulgar Latin *falciāre, the source of French faucher as well.^[1] The verb is already found as Medieval Latin falzare in a 13th-century document from Cicolano and falciare at Rome in 1363.^[3][2] DEI notes that it took the place of Latin metō (“to reap”), secō (“to cut”) and an unrecorded Vulgar Latin *falcāre, which French continues.^[6]

The noun falce continues Latin falx (“sickle, scythe”), a word found in every Romance language: French faux, Occitan faus, Catalan fals, Spanish hoz, Portuguese fouce and Romanian falce, which in Romanian means “a great quantity”.^[7][8] The origin of the Latin word is obscure.^[3][9] De Vaan compares Old Irish delg (“thorn, pin”) and Old Norse dálkr (“pin, dagger”), but finds that Latin ⟨-al-⟩ and the final ⟨-c⟩ cannot come from the same root, so that the word could at most be a loan from another Indo-European language of Italy.^[9][1] Nocentini follows Niedermann, who linked it with the pre-Latin word behind Ancient Greek Ζάγκλη (Zánklē), the old name of Messina, given for the sickle shape of its bay.^[7]

The figurative sense “to mow down, to kill in great numbers” is probably a calque of the French verb, drawing on the picture of Death armed with a scythe.^[6][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Before the Italian verb is found, Medieval Latin documents record falzare at Cicolano in the 13th century and falciare at Rome in 1363, both meaning “to cut with a sickle or scythe”.^[3] The first Italian record is in the verse of G. B. Strozzi, who died in 1571, with the same sense of cutting grass or corn with the scythe.^[3][7][11]

Semantic evolution

In the 19th and 20th centuries falciare was the usual verb for cutting hay, grass and grain: Pascoli writes of people who “mow, and cut everything” (falcia; taglia tutto), and D'Annunzio of reapers who falcian le pingui messi (“mow the rich harvests”).^[10][5] Tommaseo's dictionary also records a figurative use for cutting away vain thoughts, and a veterinary sense for a horse that swings a leg outwards in a half circle as it walks.^[12]

The figurative sense of killing many people, by war, epidemics or hunger, appears in the 19th century.^[6][2] From it came the military sense of cutting down men with machine-gun fire, and the sense in football of bringing down an opponent who is running with the ball, usually by tripping him.^[2][4][13]

Timeline

• 13th century – Medieval Latin falzare is recorded at Cicolano.^[3]
• 1363 – Medieval Latin falciare is recorded at Rome.^[3]
• Before 1463 – Zingarelli's date for the first Italian record.^[14]
• First half of the 15th century – falciatore “mower” is recorded.^[7]
• Before 1566 – falciata “a stroke of the scythe” is recorded.^[7]
• Before 1571 – G. B. Strozzi uses falciare, the first record DELI gives.^[3][7]
• 19th century – the figurative sense “to kill many people” appears.^[6]
• 1865 – falciatura “mowing” is recorded.^[7]
• 1892 – falciatrice, the mowing machine, is recorded.^[7]
• 1927 – Emilio Cecchi uses the participle falciante.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cut grass, hay or grain with a scythe or sickle; to mow: Domani falciamo il prato dietro la casa.^[2][4][5]
2. (figurative) To kill a great number of people suddenly or violently: La peste falciò mezza città.^[2][4][13]
3. (military) To cut down people with bursts of automatic fire; to sweep an area with grazing fire.^[2][4][5]
4. (football) To bring down an opponent who is running, especially by tripping him.^[2][4][15]
5. (intransitive, of a domestic animal) To swing the legs outwards when walking, because of a fault in the stance.^[2][13]

Word family

• falciata
• falciatore
• falciatrice
• falciatura
• falciante
• falciamento
• sfalcio
• sfalciare
• rifalciare

Related words

• falce
• Latin falx
• French faucher

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1586
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ 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
10. ^ 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, 584
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET, p. 2, 625
13. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana