golfo

Forms

golfo m (plural golfi)^[1] Forms in the old texts include Old Italian colfo, Old Italian gulfo and Genoese gorfo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin colfus, a form recorded in the glosses beside colpus, from the late form Ancient Greek κόλφος (kólphos) of κόλπος (kólpos, “bosom; bay”).^[4][5][1][6] DELI goes straight to the Greek and calls the change from /p/ to /f/ hard to explain;^[7] H. and R. Kahane placed it in the Greek spoken in Egypt.^[7] The initial /k/ is still kept in culfus in the 6th-century itinerary of Antoninus of Piacenza.^[7]

Italian voiced the initial consonant, as it often did before /o/ in Tuscan.^[8][9] The LEI finds the forms with /k/, such as Venetian colfo, Dalmatian chulfo and Old French couf (in the French version of Marco Polo's book, 1298), mainly in the Venetian area, and thinks the word spread from there to the other Romance languages; the voiced forms include Dalmatian gulfo, Old French golf, Old Occitan golfe (around 1190), Catalan golf, Spanish golfo and Portuguese golfo, the last perhaps borrowed from Catalan or Italian.^[3] DEI holds that French took the word from Italian, and passed it on to gulf.^[6][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Venetian document of 1284, for a wide inlet of the coast open to the sea; a northern Italian portolan, the Compasso, has it in 1296.^[2][3] In literature it first appears in Dante (before 1321): sopra il golfo / che riceve da Euro maggior briga, “above the gulf that is most troubled by the east wind”.^[7][11]

Semantic evolution

In the documents of Venice from the 13th century il Golfo was the Adriatic, and the capitano del Golfo was the elected magistrate who policed it, an office that lasted until the 18th century.^[12] Leonardo, before 1519, used the word for an inlet of a river.^[7] Figurative uses appear too: a Paduan text of 1551 has colpho for an imagined place, and Ariosto has a man swimming nel golfo delle delizie, in a sea of delights.^[3][11]

The derivative ingolfare, used above all for eating greedily, seems to be a Gallo-Romance loan.^[3] Golfo mistico, the sunken orchestra pit of an opera house, is a semantic calque of a German phrase with which Wagner named the orchestra space of his theatre at Bayreuth; it is first recorded in the Gazzetta Musicale.^[3][13][12] The Corrente del Golfo is the Gulf Stream, and il Golfo alone can mean the Persian Gulf.^[14][15]

French golf is recorded from 1284 and German Golf from 1346.^[16]

Timeline

• 1284 – A Venetian document has golfo.^[2]
• 1284 – French golf is first recorded.^[16]
• 1296 – The northern Italian Compasso portolan uses the word.^[3]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses golfo in the Paradiso.^[7]
• 1346 – German Golf is first recorded.^[16]
• Before 1519 – Leonardo uses it for an inlet of a river.^[7]
• 1551 – Paduan colpho is used for an imagined place.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (geography) A gulf: a wide inlet of the sea enclosed by headlands or points: Dalla terrazza si vedeva tutto il golfo.^{[5][13][14][1]}
2. (historical) Under the Republic of Venice, the Adriatic Sea.^[5][12]
3. (music, theatre) In golfo mistico, the orchestra pit, set lower than the stalls.^[13][14][17]

Word family

• ingolfare
• ingolfamento

Related words

• Ancient Greek κόλπος (kólpos)
• French golfe
• English gulf

Usage notes

A golfo lanciato means in a straight line from one point of a gulf to the other, and figuratively without a pause.^[14][15][2] A separate adjective golfo, “sated; abundant; proud”, is found in Pucci before 1388 and in Machiavelli; its origin is uncertain: the Zingarelli suggests gonfio crossed with bolso, and the GDLI compares Spanish golfo “vagabond”.^[14][18][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 c d e f g h Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 15, 1093
4. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1840
7. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
16. ^ a b c Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
17. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
18. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca