laguna

Forms

laguna f (plural lagune)^[1] Old Italian has lacuna and Old Italian lagona beside laguna.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin lacūna (“pool, pond; hollow, gap”), with the voicing of /k/ to /g/ of the northern dialects, Venetian in particular.^[3][4][5][6] The Latin word, probably from a phrase for “cistern water”, is the feminine of an adjective formed on Latin lacus (“lake, pond”) with the suffix -nus.^[1][3][6] It is a doublet of lacuna, the learned form of the same Latin word.^[3][7][8]

The same word is Spanish laguna, and Portuguese lagoa has another suffix.^[8][9][6] De Vaan traces lacus to Proto-Italic *lakus and Proto-Indo-European *lok-u- (“lake”), the source also of Old Irish loch and Old English lagu.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first recorded as lacuna before 1304, in the Italian translation of Plutarch, and in the Medieval Latin of Ravenna from 1042; the form laguna is in the 14th-century commentary on Dante known as the Ottimo.^[3] In all the early examples it means a sheet of water, mostly stagnant: a pool, marsh or pond.^[3][2][11]

Semantic evolution

The Ottimo imagines “a very large laguna” at the foot of a valley.^[12] The modern sense, a coastal lagoon separated from the sea by strips of land, first referred only to the lagoon of Venice and appears around 1540 in Rucellai and Giannotti.^[3][13] La laguna alone still means that of Venice.^[7][14] A literary use as “gap in a text”, the sense of lacuna, is found in Magalotti and Salvini.^[14][15]

French borrowed the word as lagune in 1609, first of the lagoon of Venice;^[13][6] German has Lagune in the Venetian sense from the 18th century.^[13][6] English took laguna in the 1610s, either from French or directly from Italian, and lagune, later lagoon, in the 1670s;^[16] Captain Cook applied it in 1769 to the water inside a Pacific atoll.^[16]

Timeline

• 1042 – Medieval Latin lacuna is recorded at Ravenna.^[3]
• Before 1304 – Lacuna appears in the Italian translation of Plutarch.^[3][7]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses the word.^[2]
• 14th century – The Ottimo commentary has the form laguna.^[3]
• c. 1540 – Rucellai and Giannotti use it of the lagoon of Venice.^[3][13]
• 1609 – French lagune is recorded.^[13]
• 1610s – English laguna is recorded.^[16]
• 1869 – The adjective lagunare is recorded.^[3][8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lagoon: a stretch of shallow salt water near the coast, often with small islands, partly cut off from the sea by sandbars or strips of land: Le barche dei pescatori attraversano la laguna.^[7][17][5]
2. la Laguna: the lagoon of Venice, by antonomasia.^[7][18][17]
3. (archaic) A gap, omission; lacuna.^[7][17][14]

Word family

• lagunare

Related words

• lacuna
• lago
• Latin lacuna
• English lagoon

Usage notes

Geographers distinguish a laguna viva, where the tide keeps the water moving, from a laguna morta, where it does not and river silt builds up.^[14][7]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2152
7. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c d e Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
16. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
17. ^ 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
18. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana