fuso

fuso¹ melted

Pronunciation

• /ˈfu.zo/^[1]

Forms

fuso (feminine fusa, masculine plural fusi, feminine plural fuse)^[1]

Etymology

The word for “melted” is learned: it is borrowed from Latin fūsus (“poured; melted”), the past participle of fundō (“to pour; to melt, cast”), and it serves as the past participle of fondere.^[2][3][4][1] The derivatives fusione and fusorio come from Latin fūsiō and Late Latin fūsōrius.^[2][3]

Latin fundō goes back to the root Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”), with a nasal present; the same root without ⟨d⟩ gave Ancient Greek χέω (khéō, “to pour”).^[5][1] Its initial /f/ from the PIE aspirate is found only in this verb and may be due to the following /u/.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Florentine translation of the Tesoro at the end of the 13th century;^[6][2] DELI's first date is Matteo Villani, before 1363, in the sense “melted, liquefied”.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was physical, of metal, wax or glass passed from solid to liquid.^[7][8] Frezzi compares a river of Hell to fuso rame, molten copper, and Biringuccio writes of iron touched by molten tin.^[7] Used of metal the word also means “cast”, as in ferro fuso “cast iron”.^[9][1] In metallurgy and geology the noun fuso is the mass obtained by melting.^[10]

Figuratively it means “well blended”, as colours fused together.^[8][11] In the 20th century it took on the slang sense “worn out, exhausted”, from motoring slang, where an engine that has seized is said to fondere; it also means “high on drugs or drink”.^[8][4][7]

Timeline

• Late 13th century – The Florentine Tesoro translation is the TLIO's first record of the adjective.^[6]
• Before 1363 – Matteo Villani uses fuso for “liquefied”.^[2]
• 20th century – The slang sense “exhausted” appears.^[8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. melted, liquefied: cera fusa, formaggio fuso.^[8][11][12]
2. Obtained by casting; cast: una campana di bronzo fuso.^[11][10][1]
3. (figurative) Well blended, closely united.^[8][11][13]
4. (colloquial) Exhausted, worn out;^[4][8][12] (slang) high on drugs or alcohol.^[4][8][12]

Noun

1. (metallurgy, geology) The mass obtained by melting.^[4][10][12]

Word family

• sfuso
• fusione
• fusorio
• fusibile

fuso² spindle

Pronunciation

• /ˈfu.zo/, /ˈfu.so/^[1]

Forms

fuso m (plural fusi m or (archaic except in fixed expressions) fusa f)^[1]

Etymology

The word for the spindle is inherited from Latin fūsus (“spindle”), of uncertain origin; the Latin word has no clear cognates outside Latin, and Wiktionary mentions a possible non-Indo-European substrate.^{[2][3][1][14]} DEI notes that it is Pan-Romance but competes with rocca in some areas.^[15] The same word is Romanian fus, Dalmatian fois, Sardinian fusu, Friulian fus, Old Occitan fus, Catalan fus, Spanish huso and Portuguese fuso;^[3][16][17] The French word is the diminutive French fuseau.^[3][16][17]

Latin had both the masculine fūsus and a neuter fūsum.^[7] The mathematical and geographical senses, including fuso orario, come from the likeness between a strip of the sphere spread out flat and a spindle, which is swollen in the middle.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the poems of the Sienese Ruggieri Apugliese, in the middle of the 13th century;^[6][2] DELI's first date is Dante, before 1321.^[2] The sense is the hand spindle, the wooden tool with tapered ends that twists the fibre into thread and winds it.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the spindle stood for spinning as women's work, and for the spindle on which Clotho, one of the Fates, spins the thread of each human life.^[6][10] By the 14th century the word also named the axle of a wheel, and later many other spindle-shaped things: a part of spinning machines, the stub axle of a car, a gore of a parachute, and the spindle that forms in the cell nucleus during mitosis.^[2][4]

Cavalieri used it in 1639 for a lune of a sphere, the surface between two great semicircles.^[2] From this geometrical sense comes fuso orario, the time zone.^[2][4] DELI notes that Panzini credited the idea of time zones to Filopanti of Budrio, while the Enciclopedia italiana gives it to the Canadian Fleming (1878).^[2]

English fuse, the cord or tube that sets off an explosive charge, was borrowed from Italian fuso in the 1640s, for the long thin shape of the first fuses.^[18][19]

Timeline

• Mid-13th century – Ruggieri Apugliese uses fuso.^[6]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses fuso for the spinner's spindle.^[2]
• 14th century – Gano da Colle uses it for the axle of a wheel.^[2]
• 1639 – Cavalieri uses fuso in geometry.^[2]
• 1644 – English fuse, from Italian fuso, is first recorded.^[19]
• 1878 – Fleming proposes the time zones, fusi orari.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A spindle: the wooden tool, swollen in the middle and tapered at both ends, used in hand spinning to twist the thread and wind it: la rocca e il fuso.^[4][8][11]
2. In spinning machines, the rotating part that twists and winds the thread.^[4][8][12]
3. (figurative) Spinning, the work of the spindle.^[4][20]
4. Any object or part of a machine shaped like a spindle, such as the stub axle of a car wheel or the shank of an anchor.^[4][8][20]
5. (biology) The spindle-shaped structure formed in the cell during mitosis.^[4]
6. (geometry) A lune, the part of a sphere's surface between two great semicircles;^[4][2] fuso orario, a time zone.^[4][2]
7. (heraldry) A narrow lozenge, a fusil.^[4][1]

Word family

• fuso orario
• fusa
• fusaiola
• fusello
• fusiforme
• fusillo
• fusolo
• affusolare
• affusolato