ingordo

Forms

ingordo (feminine ingorda, masculine plural ingordi, feminine plural ingorde)^[1] Old Italian also has engordo, with the feminine Old Italian engorda and the clipped Old Italian 'ngordo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian in- + gordo, with the prefix in its intensive or illative value.^[4][5][6][2] The base is from Latin gurdus (“dull, stupid; heavy”), a popular word of uncertain origin that Latin records only once in the mime writer Laberius, who died in 43 BC.^[4][7] GRADIT and Treccani give the derivation as probable only, and Zingarelli takes the Italian word straight from the Latin adjective.^[5][8][9] Wiktionary has it through a dialect form of the same word, from the Late Latin adjective.^[1]

According to DELI, the first sense of the Latin adjective was “stupid”, and, from about 400 AD, in Servius, it also meant “blunt” of a tool.^[4] The other senses of the Romance languages grew out of this one.^[4] The same Latin word gave French gourd (“numb, stiff”), Occitan gort, Catalan gort, Spanish gordo (“fat”) and Portuguese gordo.^[7][10] It also survives in Calabrian dialects, where it means “full, sated”.^[11][10]

Quintilian called the Latin word Spanish, which de Vaan thinks possible but unproven.^[12][13] He reconstructs Proto-Italic *gʷordo- (“heavy, stubborn”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷr̥d-o-, and compares Ancient Greek βραδύς (bradús, “slow”), Lithuanian gurdùs and Proto-Slavic *gъrdъ (“proud”).^[12][1] The Indo-European forms point to a u-stem, while Latin has an o-stem.^[12][1] Nocentini compares the Latin and Greek adjectives as he does Latin gravis (“heavy”) and Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Parlamenti of Guido Faba, a Bolognese text of about 1243, where the word means excessively greedy, above all for food.^[2] DELI dates the figurative sense “eager, covetous” from before 1367 (Fazio degli Uberti) and the sense “greedy for food” only from before 1484 (Luigi Pulci). It calls the reading ingordo in Dante doubtful, as it may be a form of gordo.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Both senses were already there in Old Italian: excessive greed for food, and figuratively a greed that knows no measure.^[2] Used as a noun, the word meant a glutton.^[2] DELI dates the noun, a greedy person, from before 1419 (Giovanni Dominici).^[4] Pulci lists the ingordi among the sinners in his Morgante: superbi, invidiosi, irosi, ingordi (“proud, envious, wrathful, greedy”).^[3] Tommaseo records tempo ingordo “devouring time”, after the Latin edax, and quotes Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch for the transferred sense of eager desire.^[14]

Treccani notes that greed in ingordo concerns the quantity eaten rather than its quality, and that the figurative sense always implies disapproval.^[8] The noun ingordigia is recorded from 1303 as ingurdisia and in its present form from 1481 (Cristoforo Landino).^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1243 – Guido Faba's Parlamenti (Bologna) have the first record of the word.^[2]
• 1303 – The noun is recorded as ingurdisia in the Cronica degli Imperatori romani.^[4]
• Before 1367 – Fazio degli Uberti uses ingordo figuratively, “covetous”.^[4]
• Before 1419 – Giovanni Dominici uses ingordo as a noun, a greedy person.^[4]
• 1481 – Cristoforo Landino writes ingordigia.^[4]
• Before 1484 – Luigi Pulci uses ingordo for greed for food.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. greedy, gluttonous: eating or drinking far more than is moderate, with di for the food: È ingordo di castagne.^[5][15][6]
2. (figurative) avid, covetous: having an excessive desire for something, such as money or power.^[5][15][6]
3. Showing greed: an ingorda hunger or thirst.^[9][16]

Noun

1. A glutton, a greedy person.^[5][15][9]

Word family

• ingordigia
• ingordamente
• ingordaggine

Related words

• gordo
• Latin gurdus
• French gourd

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
9. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2031
12. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli