fontana

Forms

fontana f (plural fontane)^[1] Old texts also have the forms Old Italian fontan, fontanna, funtana and fundana.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin fontāna (“spring, fountain”), the noun made from the feminine of the adjective Latin fontānus (“of a spring”), as in a phrase meaning “spring water” with the word for water left out.^{[3][4][5][1][6]} The adjective is formed from fōns (“spring, well”) with the suffix -ānus.^[7][1] In writing the noun appears late: DEI cites the Roman land surveyors of the 4th century, who set spring water against rainwater, and the Late Latin noun is attested from Vopiscus, about 400 AD.^[8][9][10] The DÉRom therefore treats it as a word of the spoken language, a Proto-Romance derivative of the word for “spring” that competed with it and only reached the written language very late.^[9]

The word is found in every Romance language: French fontaine, Occitan fontana, Catalan fontana, Romanian fîntînă, Sardinian funtana, Friulian fontane, Romansh fontauna and Old Spanish hontana.^[4][11][9] From Latin it also passed into the insular Celtic languages, as Old Cornish funten.^[8] Wiktionary suggests that the sense of an artificial fountain may owe something to the Old French word.^[1]

De Vaan traces the Latin noun to Proto-Italic *fonti- and further to a noun Proto-Indo-European *dʰonh₂-ti- (“flowing”), from the root *dʰenh₂- (“to run, flow”), though he notes that the form of the Latin word is hard to derive.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Proverbia que dicuntur, a Venetian poem of the last quarter of the 12th century.^[2] In Old Italian the word meant a spring, the place where underground water comes to the surface and feeds a pool or a stream, and soon also a spring improved by building work.^[2] DELI dates the word to before 1250, in Giacomo da Lentini.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “spring” runs through medieval literature: Dante's Purgatorio speaks of water that flows “from a steady and sure spring” (di fontana salda e certa), Petrarch of chiare fontane e verdi prati (clear springs and green meadows), and Dante also uses the plural for rivers, le fontane di Brenta e di Piava.^[13][14][5] Old Italian proverbs built on it, such as fontana fa fiume (a spring makes a river), and the word was used of tears, of the heart as the source of blood, of Christ's wounds and of the sun as a source of light.^[2] Figuratively a person or thing could be the fontana of hope or of sorrow: Dante calls the Virgin di speranza fontana vivace.^[5][15]

The sense of a built fountain is already in the TLIO, and Tommaseo records fontana for the whole architectural work that adorns an artificial fountain.^[2][16] Today this is the main sense, while “spring” is archaic or literary.^[17][15] Later uses include a firework that throws up a jet of sparks, a gas or lava fountain in geology, and in cooking the well made in a heap of flour to take the eggs.^[5][17][15] In the Veneto fontanazzi are springs that rise in the plain.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 400 – Late Latin fontana “spring” is recorded in Vopiscus.^[9][10]
• 1175–1200 – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur use fontana.^[2]
• Before 1250 – Giacomo da Lentini uses the word.^[3]
• Before 1300 – The diminutive fontanella is recorded.^[4]
• Late 14th century – Fontaniere, the keeper of fountains, is recorded.^[4]
• Before 1519 – Fontanile is recorded.^[4]
• 1939–1940 – Fontanazzo, a word from the Veneto, is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fountain: a structure that supplies water from a spring or an aqueduct, often with a basin and jets, and in squares and gardens an ornamental work with sculpture: l'acqua della fontana è potabile.^[5][17][19]
2. (figurative) A heavy, unbroken flow: una fontana di parole.^[5][17][20]
3. (archaic, literary) A spring, a sorgente; by extension a river or stream.^[5][17][21]
4. (figurative, literary) The source or cause of something.^[5][17][21]
5. A firework that throws up a shower of sparks.^[5][17][1]
6. (cooking) A heap of flour with a hollow in the middle into which the eggs and other ingredients of a dough are put.^[5][17][21]
7. (geology) In fontana ardente, an outflow of natural gas from the ground that may catch fire, and fontana di lava, a jet of lava from a volcano.^[17][21][14]

Word family

• fontanella
• fontaniere
• fontanile
• fontanazzo
• fontanone

Related words

• fonte
• Latin fōns
• French fontaine

Usage notes

The adverbial phrase a fontana means “gushing, in abundance”.^[5][14] Common diminutives and augmentatives are fontanella, fontanina and fontanone.^[21][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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 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. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1683
9. ^ a b c d Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
10. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
14. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
16. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
18. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 454
19. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
20. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
21. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli