incinto

Forms

incinto (feminine incinta, masculine plural incinti, feminine plural incinte)^[1]

Etymology

The feminine incinta, the usual form, continues inherited from Late Latin incincta (“pregnant”).^[2][3][4][5] The Late Latin word reshaped the classical Latin inciēns (“big with young”), a word of animal breeders, by folk etymology, as if it were the participle of incingō (“to gird”) with the negative prefix in-, “without a belt”.^[2][3][6][7] Isidore of Seville (before 636) already explains it so: “incincta, id est sine cinctu; quia praecingi fortiter uterus non permittit” (“ungirded, that is without a belt, because the womb does not allow itself to be tightly girded”).^[2] GRADIT and Treccani suggest instead that pregnant women wore a belt, so that the word kept the sense “girded”.^[4][7]

The same word is French enceinte, Old Occitan encencha and Spanish encinta.^[3][5][8] Nocentini and DEI connect the classical word with Ancient Greek ἔγκυος (énkuos, “pregnant”), from κυέω (kuéō, “to be pregnant”).^[3][8] De Vaan accepts the link with the root Proto-Indo-European *ḱuH- (“to swell”) but notes that its form is disputed.^[9]

Used as a participle, the masculine form, meaning “girded”, belongs to the obsolete verb incingere, from incingō.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record of the feminine is Jacopone da Todi (before 1306): “incinta si trovò la pulzelletta” (“the young maiden found herself with child”), of the Virgin Mary.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

Giovanni Villani writes of a mother who “rimase incinta”, “became pregnant”, after the death of the father Aeneas.^[11] In 1581 Filippo Sassetti, writing from Madrid, mocked the Florentine scholars who looked for the origin of the word in pregnant ewes, and pointed out that the word also lived on in Castilian.^[2]

Because only women become pregnant, the masculine incinto is used only jokingly, of a man with a large belly.^[6][10] The participle incinto “girded, clad”, used by Matteo Maria Boiardo, is now rare.^[11][10] Mettere incinta means to make a woman pregnant.^[4][11]

Timeline

• Before 636 – Isidore of Seville explains Latin incincta as “without a belt”.^[2]
• Before 1306 – Jacopone da Todi uses incinta.^[2][4]
• 1581 – Filippo Sassetti discusses the origin of the word in a letter from Madrid.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a woman, pregnant: È incinta di cinque mesi.^[4][6][1]
2. (humorous, masculine) Of a man, having a large belly: Con quella pancia sembri incinto.^[6][10]
3. (rare, literary) Girded, surrounded: past participle of incingere.^[10][11]

Related words

• cingere
• cinto
• Latin inciens
• French enceinte

Usage notes

Rimanere incinta (“to become pregnant”) and mettere incinta are the usual phrases.^[4][10] The feminine is also a noun, un'incinta, a pregnant woman.^[4][10] A separate incinta, a strake of planking along a ship's hull, comes from the participle in the sense “girded” and is recorded from the 18th century;^[4][8][11] DEI compares French préceinte.^[4][8][11] The GDLI also records an obsolete noun incinto “belt”, a variant of cinto.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
8. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1988
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 7, 683