lembo

Forms

lembo m (plural lembi)^[1] Old Italian also has the plural Old Italian limbi and the dialect form Old Italian lempo.^[2][3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin limbus (“border, hem; strip, band”), a technical term.^[4][5][6][1] Latin ⟨ĭ⟩ gave Italian closed /e/.^[4][6] Varro also wrote the Latin word as lembus.^[7][8] limbo is a learned doublet taken from the same Latin word.^[4][9][1] In the 17th century the learned form, accepted by Galileo also as ⟨lembo⟩, became a scientific term for the outermost circle of the visible hemisphere of the Moon.^[4]

DEI found the word only in Italy.^[10] Prati and REW list limbello “leather scraps” among its derivatives.^[11][12]

The Latin word has no clear etymology.^[4][5][13] De Vaan sets up Proto-Indo-European *lemb-o- and compares Sanskrit लम्बते (lámbate, “hangs down limply”), Old English limpan (“to happen”) and English limp, but finds the etymology uncertain because of the sound *b, the very specific meaning and the word's absence from the oldest texts.^[7][8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the poems of Monte Andrea, Florentine, from the second half of the 13th century, in the sense “the lower edge of a robe or other garment”.^[2] DELI dates this sense to Dante's Inferno (1300–1313), where Dante is recognised by one who mi prese per lo lembo (“took me by the hem”).^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian also used the word for the hem of a garment gathered up to serve as a pouch, for the brow of a slope and for the edge of a furrow.^[2] Boccaccio has a woman gathering herbs and roots in un lembo della sua gonnella, the fold of her skirt.^[3] Dante extended it to “edge, margin” (1313–1319), and the sense “zone, strip, part” is dated before 1484 in Luigi Pulci.^[4] Petrarch used lembo for the whole garment.^[14]

In the 17th century Oudin recorded lembo for a piece of cloth or fur worn by women on their shoulders in winter, and lembare “to hem”.^[11][10] Botany took up the word in 1813 for the expanded, flat part of a leaf or petal.^[4] It has since served in astronomy for the edge of a heavenly body's disk, in surgery for a flap of skin used in grafts, and in geology for the remnant of an eroded nappe.^[15][16]

Timeline

• Second half of the 13th century – Monte Andrea uses lembo for the lower edge of a garment.^[2]
• 1300–1313 – Dante's Inferno has per lo lembo.^[4]
• 1313–1319 – Dante uses it for “edge, margin”.^[4]
• Before 1484 – Luigi Pulci uses it for a zone or strip.^[4]
• 1639 – Oudin records lembare “to hem”.^[10]
• 1813 – Targioni Tozzetti uses it for the blade of a leaf.^[4]
• 1873 – Slembare is first recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The end of a garment, especially the lower edge; hem, skirt: Gli tirò il lembo della giacca.^[6][16][9]
2. Edge, margin, border, as of a sheet or a wound.^[6][16][9]
3. The far end or outlying tip of a territory or region.^[6][16][15]
4. A thin strip or scrap, as of cloth or skin.^[6][16][9]
5. A narrow stretch or patch, as of sky or land.^[6][9][15]
6. (botany) The flat, expanded part of a leaf or petal; lamina.^[16][9][15]
7. (surgery) lembo cutaneo: a flap of skin detached for grafting.^[16][15]
8. (astronomy) The edge of the disk of a heavenly body, its limb.^[15]
9. (geology) lembo di ricoprimento: the remnant of an eroded nappe.^[6][15]

Word family

• slembare
• lembuccio

Related words

• limbo
• Latin limbus

Usage notes

A second, obsolete lembo, pronounced with an open vowel, was a light, fast boat used for war or fishing.^[6][17][1] It is a learned word from Latin lembus, taken from Greek lémbos, which DEI thought probably of Liburnian origin.^[6][10] The TLIO records it in the Florentine translation of Livy's fourth decade (1346), and DEI notes such ships in use at Venice in the 14th century and in Corsica from the 15th.^[2][10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2199
11. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 585
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
13. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ a b c d e f g Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
16. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
17. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli