lambire

Forms

lambire (first-person singular present lambìsco, first-person singular past historic lambìi, past participle lambìto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin lambere (“to lick”), which passed from the third conjugation into the verbs in -ire.^[2][3][4][5] DELI calls the Latin verb expressive, used at first of a dog lapping, and notes that the Late Latin of the land surveyors also had Late Latin lambīscere, said of water.^[2][6][7] The Latin verb survives in Spanish lamer and Portuguese lamber, and Logudorese has làmbere.^[8][9][6]

The Latin verb has a nasal infix in a root of imitative origin, which is also found in Ancient Greek λάπτω (láptō, “to lick”), Old High German laffan and Old English lapian, the source of the English word lap.^[8][6][1] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *lh₂-m-P- (“to lick”), with a labial stop that does not correspond regularly from language to language (/b/ in Latin and Germanic, /p/ in Albanian and Balto-Slavic), so he takes these words to be onomatopoeic.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Ottimo commento on Dante's Purgatorio, written in Florence before 1334, in the sense “to touch lightly with the tongue, lick”: Quelli che con la mano e con la lingua lambiranno l’acqua, siccome con la lingua suole lambire il cane (“those who lap the water with hand and tongue, as a dog laps with its tongue”).^[11][12][2]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already used the verb for something lying along the edge of another thing and surrounding it.^[11] In medical writing it also meant to sip a remedy drop by drop.^[12] Galileo, who died in 1642, used it figuratively for barely touching or grazing something, the sense that became the usual one: water, flames, light and air that “lick” a surface.^[2][6][13] Tommaseo's dictionary gives the sea that laps a city and the river that laps its bank, beside the Latin of Horace.^[14]

Oudin's dictionary of 1639 records a variant lembire, glossed in French as licking and touching gently.^[6][5] Poets kept the Latin form làmbere.^[3][13][12]

Timeline

• Before 1334 – The Ottimo commento on the Purgatorio uses lambire “to lick”.^[11][2]
• 1639 – Oudin records the variant lembire.^[6]
• Before 1642 – Galileo uses the verb figuratively for “to graze, touch lightly”.^[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary) Of an animal: to lick lightly, touch with the tongue: Il cane lambiva l’acqua della pozza.^{[7][3][4][13]}
2. To graze, touch barely, said mostly of water, flames or light: Le onde lambivano la chiglia della barca.^[7][3][4][1]

Word family

• lambimento
• lambente

Related words

• lappare
• Latin lambō

Usage notes

The verb is conjugated with -isc- (lambisco, lambisci); the literary làmbere has the present lambo.^[3][13][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 572
6. ^ a b c d e f g Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2154
7. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
12. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
13. ^ 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)
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli