Etymologically
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formaggio

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Pronunciation

  • /forˈmad.d͡ʒo/[1]

Forms

formaggio m (plural formaggi)[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian formaio, Old Italian formajo, Old Italian formagio and Old Italian formazo, mostly from northern Italy.[2] The word is Venetian formajo, and in the dialects of Lombardy and Emilia it is Lombard formai.[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French formage, the Old French form of modern French fromage.[5][6][7][1] The French word comes from Medieval Latin formaticum, short for a phrase meaning “cheese put in a mould”, from Latin forma (“form; mould”).[5][6][1] The Medieval Latin word is recorded in France from the 8th century, in the Reichenau Glossary and in a capitulary of Charlemagne of 802, and in Italy at Bobbio from 862.[8][1]

Meyer-Lübke saw the formation as Gallo-Romance only: it replaced Latin caseus (“cheese”) there, and the early loan Breton fourondec shows that it is older than the change of “-aticu” to French “-age”.[4][1] The loan into Italian brought the word into the old territory of “caseus”, which survives in cacio.[8][5] The same French word gave Old Occitan formatge and was borrowed as Spanish formaje.[4][9]

The origin of Latin “forma” is unknown.[10][1] One proposal derives it from an Etruscan “*morma”, taken from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “shape”), with the first *m* changed to *f* as in Latin formica and Latin formido.[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Medieval Latin documents from Verona (formaius, 1189) and Fabriano (formagium, 1190) show the word in Italy before any Italian text.[5] The first Italian record is in the Milanese poems of Bonvesin de la Riva, who died before 1315, with the sense “cheese”, the food made by curdling milk with rennet.[5][2][7]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word already named kinds of cheese by origin or animal: formaggio parmigiano, formaggio di pecora and formaggio vaccino, and formaggio cavallo, the same as caciocavallo.[2] Boccaccio's Decameron imagines “a mountain all of grated Parmesan cheese” (una montagna tutta di formaggio parmigiano grattugiato).[11]

Northern forms such as Vicentine formaio (1433) and Venetian formazo (1503) kept the ending the Lombard and Venetian dialects still have.[3] Derivatives followed: formaggiaio, a maker or seller of cheese, goes back to Medieval Latin formaglarius (Bologna, 1288), and formaggino, processed cheese in small portions, and formaggiera, the dish for grated cheese, entered the dictionaries in 1925.[5]

In film-making formaggio is also a device between the tripod head and the camera that allows steep vertical angles.[12] German borrowed the word as Formaggio (1876),[13] and Italian passed it on to Amharic and Somali.[1]

Timeline

  • 1189 – Medieval Latin formaius is recorded at Verona.[5]
  • 1190 – Formagium appears in a Medieval Latin document from Fabriano.[5]
  • 1288 – Formaglarius “cheesemonger” is recorded at Bologna.[5]
  • Before 1315 – Bonvesin de la Riva uses Italian formaggio.[5][2]
  • 1433 – Vicentine formaio is recorded.[3]
  • 1503 – Venetian formazo is recorded.[3]
  • 1876 – German Formaggio is first recorded.[13]
  • 1925 – Formaggino and formaggiera appear in the Zingarelli dictionary.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. cheese: the food made by curdling cow's, sheep's, goat's or buffalo's milk with rennet, usually salted and often aged.[7][12][14]
  2. (cinema) A mount between the tripod head and the camera that allows steep vertical camera angles.[12]

Word family

  • formaggino
  • formaggiera
  • formaggiaio
  • formaggella
  • formaggetta

Usage notes

Formaggio and cacio are synonyms.[15][16] Common combinations name the kind of cheese: formaggio fresco, stagionato, grattugiato (fresh, aged, grated), and formaggio fuso (processed cheese).[7][15]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
  3. ^ a b c d Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 457
  4. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  7. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1689
  9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  12. ^ 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
  13. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  14. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  15. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  16. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse