fossato

Forms

fossato m (plural fossati)^[1] Old Italian forms include fossado, Old Italian fossao, Old Italian fosato, Old Italian fossatu and Old Italian foxà.^[2] DEI also records a feminine fossata from the 14th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin fossātum (“ditch”), the past participle used as a noun of Latin fossō (“to dig”), an intensive of fodiō (“to dig”).^{[4][5][6][7][1]} Devoto–Oli, Gabrielli and the GDLI derive it instead from fossa.^[8][9][10] In Latin the noun was a term of soldiers and agronomists from the 3rd century, and Medieval Latin has fossadus at Venice in 1038.^[3] Meyer-Lübke noted that the sense “fort” is already secure in Latin times.^[11]

The word belongs to Italy and the western Romance area: Old Occitan fosat, Old Spanish fonsado and Old Portuguese fossado “army”, probably first “fortification”, and Romansh fusau “dung pit”.^[11][3] It passed into Albanian fshat (“village”), which gave Romanian sat (“village”); a direct Latin origin of the Romanian word is hardly possible on phonetic grounds.^[11][3]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰodʰ-i- (“to poke, dig”), with o-grade verb formations in Hittite, Balto-Slavic and Tocharian as well.^[12] Nocentini compares Lithuanian bèsti (“to pierce, dig”), Welsh bedd (“grave”) and Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌳𐌹 (badi, “bed”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a document from Fabriano of 1186, for a ditch, natural or dug, that carries off water.^[2] DELI's first is a Florentine text of 1281, a land boundary dal terzo fossato (“on the third side a ditch”).^[4][10]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already had three senses: the ditch, the water running in it, and the military trench around a fortress or camp.^[2] Dante uses the second in the Purgatorio: La pioggia cadde, e a' fossati venne / di lei ciò che la terra non sofferse (“The rain fell, and what the earth could not hold of it came to the streams”).^[14][5] Villani wrote that every fossato running into the Arno looked like a river.^[14][15] In Tuscany it was also the brook where clothes were washed, as Salvini noted on a passage of the Tancia.^[15]

DEI finds Fossato as a place name in Calabria, where it may have come through Byzantine Greek with the sense “fortified town”, as in Fustat, the old suburb of Cairo.^[3] The modern dictionaries add a figurative “gap, divide” between people or groups, and in athletics the water jump of the 3000-metre steeplechase.^[8][6][7] The sense “small stream” is now literary or archaic.^[8][16]

Timeline

• 1038 – Medieval Latin fossadus is recorded at Venice.^[3]
• 1186 – First Italian record, in a document from Fabriano.^[2]
• 1281 – A Florentine text uses fossato in a land boundary.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A long ditch, natural or dug, along fields or roads, that carries off drainage water.^[5][8][6]
2. A moat: a wide trench, dry or filled with water, around an old fortification: Un ponte levatoio scavalcava il fossato della rocca.^[5][8][7]
3. (archaic, literary) A small stream or torrente.^[5][8][16]
4. (athletics) The water jump of the 3000-metre steeplechase.^[8]
5. (figurative) A gap or divide that cannot be bridged.^[8][6][7]

Word family

• fossatello

Related words

• fossa
• fosso
• Latin fossatum

References

1. ^ a b c 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 e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1698
4. ^ a b c Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
9. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
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. 6, 253
11. ^ a b c 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. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
16. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli