gregna

Forms

gregna f (plural gregne)^[1] An older spelling is grégnia.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gremia, the neuter plural of gremium (“lap; armful”), which already meant a bundle of firewood or of ears of grain.^[3][4][5][1] The word reached the standard language from the southern dialects.^[3][2] The change of /mj/ to /ɲ/ is typical of the South.^[1] Documents from Bagnoregio (1373) and Nepi (1550) have the form Old Italian grembia, and DEI compares grembio.^[3][2]

The word is Neapolitan gregna “handful of ears” (1637) and Sicilian gregna “sheaf”.^[6][1] The Milanese gregna, a small sheaf of rice, may have been brought north by workers from Apulia, according to Prati.^[6] Meyer-Lübke lists the southern outcomes of the Latin plural, together with a Logudorese derivative meaning a stacked heap of sheaves.^[7]

The Latin noun, meaning “lap, bosom”, probably first meant “armload, embrace”.^[8][1] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *h₂grem- (“to gather”), perhaps an extension of the root of Ancient Greek ἀγείρω (ageírō, “to gather”).^[1] De Vaan gives the connection with a question mark and finds the proposed cognates unconvincing.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Senisio's Sicilian Declarus of 1348, where the word names a handful of cereal stalks tied into a bundle, a sheaf.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th to 17th centuries the word appears in documents from Sutri (1458), Velletri (16th century) and Cori (17th century).^[3] GRADIT dates its first Italian use before 1499.^[4] The Capitoli of the Bagliva of Galatina forbid anyone to put animals into the stubble before the gregnie have been taken away (se primo non ne so’ levate le gregnie).^[2]

The sense moved from the single sheaf to a stack of sheaves: Puoti describes the gregna as the round mass built from the sheaves of wheat after reaping, and Tommaseo, following Palma, defines it as a union of many sheaves.^[2][10] Today the dictionaries give only this sense and label the word regional.^[4][11][5] Oudin's dictionary already listed gregnha.^[6]

Timeline

• 1348 – Senisio's Declarus records gregna “sheaf” in Sicily.^[9]
• 1373 – The form grembia appears in a document from Bagnoregio.^[3]
• 1458 – Gregna is recorded at Sutri.^[3]
• Before 1499 – GRADIT's first Italian record.^[4]
• 1637 – Neapolitan gregna “handful of ears” is recorded.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (regional) A stack of sheaves of reaped grain, built in the field: I contadini alzavano le gregne prima della trebbiatura.^{[4][11][5][1]}
2. (dated) A single sheaf of reaped cereal.^[2][9]

Related words

• grembo
• grembio
• gremio
• Latin gremium

Usage notes

GRADIT marks the word as regional.^[4] Prati doubts that it was ever Tuscan, although Palma's dictionary includes it.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
3. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1868
4. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d e Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 528
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier