festuca

Forms

festuca f (plural festuche)^[1] The TLIO's forms include Old Italian festuga, Old Italian festugo, Old Italian fistuca and the plural Old Italian fustughe.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin festūca (“stalk, straw”).^{[3][4][1][5][6]} The GDLI notes that the word spread through church texts.^[7]

The Latin word continues in Old Occitan festuga, while French fétu comes from a by-form, Late Latin festūcum.^[6] Meyer-Lübke adds northern dialect forms such as Vicentine fastugo and Engadine fastüi, and Sardinian fustigu.^[8]

The origin of the Latin word is unknown.^[3][9][10] De Vaan notes that if ferula (“giant fennel”) is related, the two point to a common stem.^[9] The ending is the one found in plant names such as sambūcus (“elder”) and lactūca (“lettuce”).^[9][11] Nocentini, following Alessio, adds the Latin variant fistūca and fistula (“reed, pipe”) to the comparison with the word for giant fennel, and traces them to a pre-Latin substrate base.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Lombard poet Pietro da Bescapè in 1274, with the sense “a splinter of wood or straw”, and also as a type of something worthless.^[2] DELI's first record is Dante's Inferno, where the traitors frozen in the ice show through come festuca in vetro, “like a straw in glass”.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The word was used in the Gospel image of the mote and the beam: an Old Italian text says one must take the beam out of one's own eye before the festuca from one's neighbour's.^[12] Sacchetti uses festuga for something worth nothing at all.^[12]

Historians of law use the word for the straw without its ear, or a marked stick, that in early Germanic law had a sacred value as the symbol for concluding certain legal transactions.^[5][4][13] In botany it names a genus of grasses of the temperate regions, with about sixty species, and DEI notes that one species was known to Italian botanists by 1597.^[7][14] Domenichi's Pliny writes that l’erba festuca chokes barley.^[7]

Timeline

• 1274 – Pietro da Bescapè uses festuca.^[2]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses the word in the Inferno.^[3]
• 1597 – A grass of the genus is known to Italian botanists.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) A wisp of straw, a tiny splinter or speck: trasparien come festuca in vetro (Dante).^{[4][13][15][10][5]}
2. (history of law) In early Germanic law, a straw stalk without its ear, used as a symbol in concluding a legal transaction.^[4][13][5]
3. (botany) fescue: a perennial grass with rhizomes and panicles of small cylindrical spikelets, grown for fodder, and with a capital the genus Festuca: festuca dei prati, festuca rossa.^{[4][13][5][16][1]}

Related words

• Latin festuca
• French fétu

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d 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 De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
6. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c 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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c d 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 Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1627
15. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli