gobbo

Forms

gobbo (feminine gobba, masculine plural gobbi, feminine plural gobbe)^[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian gobo and Old Italian guobbi (plural).^[2][3] The old language also had Old Italian gombo “hunchbacked person”, from a nasalised Latin variant.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *gubbus, a spoken Latin variant of the classical Latin gibbus (“humped; hump”).^{[4][5][6][1][2]} DELI thinks the form with ⟨u⟩ was meant to render Ancient Greek κυφός (kuphós, “bent forward”), which shows more clearly in Venetian gufo (“bent, hunchbacked”).^[4][3] Nocentini grants that this adjective, and the Greek noun for “hump” beside it, may have had a hand in it, but notes that words for bodily defects vary freely, so the lines of descent between such forms are not always straight.^[5] Devoto saw instead a crossing of the classical word with Latin cloppus (“lame”).^[7]

Latin also had a nasalised *gumbus, the source of the old gombo, and a *gimbus that lives on in the south and in Genoese.^[4][8][9] The classical form survives in Catalan gep (from which Spanish chepa (“hump”)), Portuguese gebo and Romanian gheabă.^[5][8] A blend with Latin curvus (“bent”) is seen in old Venetian sgorbar and Spanish agobiar (“to bend down”).^[8][9] French borrowed the Italian diminutive as French gobin (“hunchback”) in the 16th century.^[8][9][10]

The classical word is derived from gibber (“hump”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *geybʰ- (“bowed, curved”).^[1] Nocentini compares Lithuanian geibùs (“clumsy”).^[5] The learned gibbo continues the classical word directly.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The adjective, “having a hump”, first appears in the 14th-century Italian Bible, which bars a priest's son born “blind and lame, or hunchbacked” from sacrifice.^[4][3] The noun “hump” is as old: a 14th-century translation of Gregory the Great says that whoever has a gobbo may not be ordained.^[4][11] GRADIT dates the adjective to about 1325, and the TLIO's first example is from Cino da Pistoia, before 1336, of a road with bumps in it.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

From the person with a hump the adjective spread to anyone who stoops (1483, Sabadino degli Arienti) and to anything curved or convex (before 1484, Luigi Pulci).^[4] The noun for a hunchbacked person is recorded in the 15th-century carnival songs.^[4] Popular belief holds that hunchbacks bring luck, and a gobbo reale is someone with a hump both in front and behind.^[3][12]

In Tuscany the masculine noun gobbo also means the hump itself, or any swelling, and jokingly a pledge left at the pawnshop.^[6][13] The feminine noun gobba took over “hump” in the standard language from the 16th century.^[4][5] In gardening the plural gobbi are cardoon or artichoke shoots bent down and earthed up to blanch them (1798); Marco Lastri explained that they are named from their curved, twisted shape.^[4][11] The mathematical curva gobba is a curve that does not lie in a plane.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1325 – GRADIT's first date for the adjective.^[6]
• 14th century – The Italian Bible and a translation of Gregory the Great use the adjective and the noun “hump”.^[4]
• Before 1336 – Cino da Pistoia uses gobbo of an uneven road.^[2]
• 15th century – The noun for a hunchbacked person appears in the carnival songs.^[4]
• 1483 – Sabadino degli Arienti uses the word for someone who stoops.^[4]
• 1563 – Gobba “hump, bulge” is recorded by Florio.^[4]
• 1587 – Gobbo is recorded as a Tuscan name of the edible cardoon.^[8]
• 1942 – The film-studio gobbo, from American English gobo, is recorded.^[4][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. hunchbacked, having a hump.^{[6][12][14][1]}
2. Stooping, round-shouldered: Non leggere così gobbo sul tavolo.^[6][15][16]
3. Of a surface: humped, convex, bulging: un naso gobbo.^[6][12][14]
4. (figurative) Botched, flawed: un progetto nato gobbo.^[6][12]
5. (mathematics) skew, not lying in one plane: curva gobba.^[12][6]

Noun

1. A hunchback, a person with a hump (feminine gobba).^[6][14][16]
2. (Tuscany) A hump; a swelling or bulge: Il cappotto ti fa un gobbo dietro.^[6][12][13]
3. (regional, jocular) A pledge at the pawnshop: mettere in gobbo, to pawn.^[6][13]
4. (agriculture, usually plural) Blanched shoots of cardoon or artichoke.^[4][11][14]
5. (zoology) A duck of the genus Oxyura, named for the curve of its back.^[6][12]

Word family

• gobba
• gobbetto
• gobbuto
• gobboni
• ingobbire
• sgobbare
• sgobbone
• sgobbo

Related words

• gibbo
• Latin gibbus

Usage notes

The gobbo of film, theatre and television studios, a dark screen that blocks light or sound (1942) and later the cue board or prompter that shows the lines (1972), has a separate origin: it adapts American English gobo (1930), of unknown origin, and was only secondarily linked to gobbo “bent”.^[4][6][15] Nocentini suggests that gobo is short for English gobbet “a piece, a passage”.^[5]

The phrase colpo gobbo is a cunning, often unfair move, or a lucky stroke.^[14][12][16] In colloquial speech dimmi gobbo se non è vero (“call me a hunchback if it isn't true”) strengthens an assertion.^[6][13]

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 c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 6, 945
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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 f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1837
9. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
11. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana