ghiado

Forms

ghiado m (plural ghiadi)^[1] The Old Italian forms include ghiadio, giadio, Old Italian giaio and Old Italian jao.^[2] The old texts also have Old Italian giado.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *gladus, the spoken form of Latin gladius (“sword”).^[4][3][5][2] Nocentini and Wiktionary derive it straight from the Latin word, and Wiktionary calls it a doublet of the learned gladio.^[6][1] Devoto explained the spoken form as a dissimilation: dropping the ⟨i⟩ avoided a run of palatal sounds that would have given *ghiaggio.^[7]

Old northern forms meaning “sword” are iao in Ligurian and giao in Lombard.^[8] Provençal glai meant “fright” and has kin in Neapolitan jajë “intense cold”, Piedmontese sgiai “horror” and Dolomitic Ladin dlai “shiver”.^[9] Nocentini compares Old French glai and Old Occitan glai in the sense “gladiolus”.^[6] The DEI notes that the Latin word itself was ousted by Latin spatha in most of Romance, and that the surviving outcomes show a sense development that passed through the language of the Church.^[9]

The sense “bitter cold” grew out of the figure of a cold that cuts like a blade.^[10][3][1] Cortelazzo and Marcato add that ghiaccio helped this sense along.^[11] Bianchi had derived the cold sense from an unattested Latin *glacidus (“icy”), from glaciēs (“ice”);^[12] Körting judged this possible in sound but rejected it, because the word cannot be separated from the Occitan and Catalan words for fright.^[12]

The Latin word was probably borrowed from Celtic: it matches Welsh cleddyf (“sword”) and the Cornish and Breton words for sword, but with a different first consonant.^[13][14][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Bergamasque paraphrase of the Ten Commandments, probably of the mid-13th century, where the word means a sword: Chi de a giadi fere, a giadi perisse, “who strikes with the sword perishes by the sword”.^[2][3] Zingarelli dates the sense “bladed weapon” to 1287.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word was used mostly in the phrase a ghiado, “by the blade”: morire, uccidere or tagliare a ghiado meant to die or kill by the sword or knife, and by extension to strike down outright.^[2][3] Villani writes that Noffo fu impiccato, e 'l Priore morto a ghiado (“Noffo was hanged, and the Prior killed by the blade”), and Boccaccio's characters wish someone morto a ghiado.^[15][10] The word also named the pain that pierces the heart, above all the sorrow of the Virgin Mary at the sight of her dead son.^[2] The DEI explains this sense through the Gospel image of the sword of sorrow.^[9]

The sense “intense cold, frost” appears in the late 14th century.^[5] It runs from Berni and Varchi to D'Annunzio, who wrote febbraio / gito se n'è col ghiado (“February has gone with the frost”).^[3] Writers also used it for the chill of anguish felt round the heart, and for spiritual coldness.^[3] In Siena ghiado still means cold air, and in Naples jajë means intense cold.^[11][8] The modern dictionaries mark the word as obsolete or literary.^[16][4]

Timeline

• Mid-13th century – a Bergamasque paraphrase of the Decalogue has giadi “sword”.^[2]
• 1287 – the sense “bladed weapon” is recorded.^[5]
• Before 1380 – the sense “intense cold” is first recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) A stabbing weapon, such as a sword, dagger or knife, used almost only in the phrase morto a ghiado, killed with a blade: Il traditore fu trovato morto a ghiado.^[16][4][10]
2. (figurative, literary) frost, bitter cold.^{[16][4][5][17]}

Word family

• agghiadare

Related words

• gladio
• Latin gladius

Usage notes

Zingarelli and the DEI print the weapon and the cold as two headwords, though both derive the cold from the weapon.^[5][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f g Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 6, 734
4. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1798
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1797
10. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET, p. 270
12. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
16. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli