gennaio

Forms

gennaio m (uncountable)^[1] Old and regional forms include Old Italian gennaro, used by Petrarch, Old Italian genaio, Old Italian iennaio and northern Old Italian çenaro.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin Ienuārius, the form of the inscriptions and of Late Latin, for classical Latin Iānuārius (“(month) of Janus”).^[5][6][7][1] The month was sacred to Iānus, the god of gates and doorways, and was the eleventh month of the old Roman calendar that began in March.^[6][8][9] Devoto explains the Late Latin vowel by analogy with Februārius, and the Italian ⟨-nn-⟩ as the normal outcome of ⟨-nu-⟩ before a vowel.^[10]

The word is panromance: French janvier, Occitan genoier, Catalan gener, Spanish enero and Portuguese janeiro.^[6][11] DEI notes that Romanian has it only through Byzantine Greek, from which it also reached Calabrian.^[3][11]

De Vaan derives the god's name from Proto-Italic *jānu- (“door”) and Proto-Indo-European *ieh₂-n-u- (“passage”); the oldest sense was “passage, corridor”, and iānua (“door”) belongs to the same stem.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur, of the last quarter of the 12th century; in Tuscany DELI dates the word to 1285 and to the poet Muscia da Siena, who died before 1288.^[2][5] The sense is the first month of the year, the first after the winter solstice.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Old Italian texts spell the month in many ways, from Tuscan gennaio and gennaro to northern çenaro and zenaro and southern ginnaru.^[2][4] Muscia da Siena wishes to send mandorle novelle di gennaio (fresh almonds in January) to a friend, and Dante writes prima che gennaio tutto si sverni (before January is wholly out of winter) in the Paradiso.^[4]

Figuratively, January stood for old age, as in avere i pulcini di gennaio, to have children late in life.^[12][13] Somali borrowed the word as jannaayo.^[1]

Timeline

• 1175–1200 – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur have the word.^[2]
• 1285 – First Tuscan record.^[5]
• Before 1288 – Muscia da Siena uses gennaio.^[5][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. January, the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, of 31 days: A gennaio fa sempre freddo qui.^{[7][14][8][1]}
2. (figurative, dated) Old age.^[13][12]

Related words

• Giano
• Latin Iānus
• Latin iānua

Usage notes

The archaic gennaro survives in older literature.^[14][15] The word is used mostly in the singular.^[7][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1785
4. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
5. ^ a b c d Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
13. ^ a b Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org
14. ^ 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
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana