grillo

Forms

grillo m (plural grilli)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian grello and Old Italian grillu.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin grillus (“cricket”), also written with ⟨y⟩.^[3][4][5][1] DELI, Nocentini and GRADIT take the Latin word as imitative of the insect's chirp;^[3][4][5] DELI adds that the expressive sound kept the base ⟨gri-⟩ in the dialects against the regular sound changes.^[3][4][5] Wiktionary and DEI derive it instead from Greek: DEI from Ancient Greek γρύλλος (grúllos) “pig”, Wiktionary either from the same Greek word in the sense “performer of an Egyptian dance, comic figure” or from imitation.^[6][1] For Nocentini the spelling with ⟨y⟩ only reflects an association with the Greek word for “pig”, itself from the imitative ⟨gru-⟩ “to grunt”; the Romance outcomes show both a long and a short /i/.^[4]

The same Latin word is French grillon (a diminutive), Occitan grilh, Catalan grill, Spanish grillo, Portuguese grilho, Sardinian grigliu and Romanian grier.^[4][7] It was borrowed into Old High German grillo, modern German Grille.^[4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur, of the last quarter of the 12th century, with the sense “cricket”;^[2] Grillo had served as a personal name in Latin documents from Tuscany since 1075.^[2] DELI's first record is in Guittone d'Arezzo, before 1294.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian also used the word for the locusta and for a siege engine;^[2][3] Giovanni Villani lists gatti e grilli e torri di legname (“cats and crickets and wooden towers”).^[2][3] The figurative sense “whim, caprice” is first in San Bernardino of Siena in 1427.^[3] Nocentini explains it by the belief that the cricket was the visible form of disorders of the humours, which survives in avere grilli per la testa (“to have crickets in one's head”).^[4]

Later technical senses grew from the shape or sound of the insect: Baldinucci's hanging bridge for cleaning domes (1681), the touch-hole tube of a cannon (1798), the jack in Tuscan bowls and billiards (1887), the shackle and the trade name of a coloured telephone (1970).^[3] The diminutive grilletto became the trigger of a firearm in 1771.^[3] In Florence the festa del grillo was held at the Cascine on Ascension Day, when people went to catch a cricket.^[9][10] English has grillo as a zoological word from 1845.^[11]

Timeline

• 1075 – Grillo is recorded as a personal name in a Latin document from Prato.^[2]
• Late 12th century – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur use grillo “cricket”.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses the word.^[3]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani names a siege engine grillo.^[3]
• 1427 – San Bernardino of Siena uses it for a whim.^[3]
• 1771 – Grilletto is recorded as the trigger of a gun.^[3]
• 1845 – English grillo is recorded.^[11]
• 1970 – Zingarelli records the shackle and the telephone senses.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cricket, a black or brown jumping insect whose male chirps by rubbing its wing cases: Nei prati si sentivano i grilli.^[5][12][13]
2. (figurative) A whim, a sudden odd idea: Le è venuto il grillo di imparare il cinese.^[5][14][13]
3. (Tuscany) The jack in bowls and billiards.^[5][12][13]
4. A shackle: a U-shaped metal link closed by a screw pin.^[13][14][1]
5. A hanging wooden bridge used by builders to clean and repair domes.^[5]
6. (historical) A covered siege engine for approaching the walls of a town.^[5][2]
7. (historical) A small assault boat of the Italian navy in the First World War, able to climb over barriers on tracks.^[5][15]

Word family

• grilletto
• grillotalpa
• grillaia
• grillare
• grillettare
• sgrillettare

Related words

• Latin gryllus
• French grillon

Usage notes

Common phrases: grillo parlante, a tiresome moralist, after the Talking Cricket of Collodi's Pinocchio;^[12][13][9] indovinala grillo! “who knows?”, from an old game of telling the future from a cricket's moves;^[12][13][9] mangiare come un grillo, to eat very little;^[12][13][9] andare a sentir cantare i grilli, to die.^[12][13][9] Grillo is also a Sicilian white grape used for Marsala, a southern word of uncertain origin recorded from the 14th century,^[5][9] and in art history a grotesque figure made of a head on legs or of several heads, as in Greco-Roman art, from Ancient Greek γρύλλος (grúllos), a performer of a grotesque Egyptian dance.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 i j k l m n Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1872
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
10. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 530
11. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
12. ^ a b c d e f 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 e f g h Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli