fiaba

Forms

fiaba f (plural fiabe)^[1] Old northern texts also have Old Italian flaba, plural Old Italian flabe.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fābula (“talk, story, tale”), through the spoken Vulgar Latin *flāba, a form in which the consonants of the syncopated *fabla changed places.^[3][4][5][6] Wiktionary gives a second route without the metathesis, from *fabla through a form with a doubled /bb/ and a palatal glide.^[1] Devoto thought that *flāba was crossed with a Po Valley *fabia, since the regular Tuscan outcome would have had /v/,^[7] and Prati takes the Italian word from Venetian fiaba.^[8] DEI notes the same metathesis in some eastern French dialects.^[6]

The same Latin word gave the inherited doublets favola and fola.^[1][9] Migliorini explained this pair, like tegola beside teglia, as two parallel lines of transmission, one closer to Latin and averse to syncope, the other open to innovations from France and northern Italy.^[3]

In Latin fābula is formed from the root of for (“to speak”) with the instrument suffix -bula.^[10][1] De Vaan traces the root to Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to speak”), the source also of Ancient Greek φημί (phēmí, “I say”), and reconstructs a noun Proto-Italic *fāþlo- (“story”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Libro of Uguccione da Lodi, written in the dialect of Cremona early in the 13th century, where the plural means idle talk or untruths: Queste n'è miga fiabe, anz è bone razon (“These are no fables at all, but sound arguments”).^[2][12] DELI calls the northern flaba an isolated record and dates Tuscan fiaba from Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger in 1618.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th century the word meant above all a fib or tall story: Lippi speaks of people selling “fiabe, chiacchiere e menzogne” and Redi of telling someone una fiaba.^[12] Tommaseo noted that by his time it was said less of fables with a moral than of the marvellous tales told to children, and that in Venice fiabe were also the plays built on popular wonder tales, such as those of Carlo Gozzi.^[13]

Modern dictionaries separate fiaba, a fairy tale with human heroes and magical beings, from favola, the fable with animals and a moral.^[14] The adjective fiabesco is first recorded in Gozzi in 1798;^[3][15] DEI dated it to the 20th century and took it as a rendering of French féerique.^[6]

Timeline

• Early 13th century – Uguccione da Lodi uses flaba / fiabe in his Libro (Cremona).^[2][3]
• 1618 – Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger uses Tuscan fiaba.^[3][4]
• 1798 – Fiabesco “fairy-tale-like” is recorded in Carlo Gozzi.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fairy tale: a story of popular origin with magical beings such as witches, wizards and fairies, told especially to children: una vecchia fiaba siciliana.^[4][5][16]
2. (figurative) A fib, a story nobody should believe: Non credergli, sono fiabe.^[4][5][17]

Word family

• fiabesco
• fiabistica

Related words

• favola
• fola
• Latin fābula

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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 e f g h 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 De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1628
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 181
8. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 435
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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, 896
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
16. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
17. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse