gengiva

Forms

gengiva f (plural gengive)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian gengia, Old Italian gingia, Old Italian giengia, Old Italian gegnia and the northern Old Italian çençiva.^[2][3] Gengia and gingia survive in popular and rural speech, and gingiva is an old or regional form.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gingīva (“gum, flesh around the teeth”), a word of all the Romance languages.^[6][7][8][1] Zingarelli instead treats it as a learned word.^[9] The same Latin word gave French gencive, Occitan gengiva, Catalan genyiva, Spanish encía, Portuguese gengiva and Romanian gingie.^[7][10][11]

The origin of the Latin word is very uncertain.^[6][8][12] De Vaan calls it unknown: Pokorny compared Ancient Greek γογγύλος (gongúlos, “round”) and Germanic words for “ball” and “winding”, but the link between gums and winding is weak, and the ending is the same as in salīva.^[12] Nocentini traces it to the root of genae (“cheeks”), and Devoto suggested a partly reduplicated form of that word, “(flesh) belonging to the jaws”.^[7][13] Wiktionary mentions a possible source in Proto-Indo-European *ǵyewh₁- (“to chew”), the root of the English word chew.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first recorded in 1282 in Restoro d'Arezzo, in the form gengia, and again in the 14th-century Italian version of Pietro Ispano;^[6] gengiva itself appears about 1350 in the Italian translation of Crescenzi.^[6] The TLIO's first record is a Sienese translation of Egidio Romano from 1288.^[2] From the start it meant the flesh of the mouth that holds the teeth.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Old texts mostly have the forms without -v-: Iacopone writes of “rosee gegnìe” (rosy gums), and in Boccaccio's Decameron Pasquino rubs “i denti e le gengie” (his teeth and gums) with a sage leaf.^[3][14] The form gengia was still used by L. Viani before 1936.^[6]

The modern medical vocabulary was built on gengiva in Italian: gengivario, a remedy for the gums (1875), gengivale (1886) and gengivite, inflammation of the gums (1892), with the suffix -ite.^[7] DELI dates these words a little later, from writers such as D'Annunzio and Savinio.^[6]

Timeline

• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo uses the form gengia.^[6][8]
• 1288 – The word appears in a Sienese translation of Egidio Romano.^[2]
• c. 1350 – The form gengiva appears in the Italian translation of Crescenzi.^[6]
• 1875 – Gengivario is first recorded.^[7]
• 1886 – Gengivale is first recorded.^[7]
• 1892 – Gengivite is first recorded.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. The gum, the pink flesh inside the mouth in which the teeth are set; often plural: Le gengive mi fanno male da ieri.^[8][1]
2. (anatomy) The gingiva, the mucous membrane and connective tissue covering the alveolar arches of the jaws and surrounding the necks of the teeth.^[8][15][5]

Word family

• gengivite
• gengivale
• gengivario
• sgengivato

Related words

• gena
• Latin gingīva

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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 Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 491
5. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
9. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier