lungo

Forms

lungo (feminine lunga, masculine plural lunghi, feminine plural lunghe, superlative lunghissimo, diminutive lunghétto or lunghìno)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin longus (“long; distant”), continuing its accusative longum.^[2][3][4][1] The word is found across the Romance languages: French long, Occitan lonc, Catalan llong, Old Spanish luengo, Portuguese longo, Sardinian longu and Romanian lung.^[3][5] DELI notes that the senses of the Latin adjective often run parallel to those of Ancient Greek μακρός (makrós, “long”), but that nearly all the Italian derivatives were formed in Romance.^[2]

De Vaan traces the Latin adjective to Proto-Italic *(d)longo- and Proto-Indo-European *dlongʰ-o-, the source also of Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌲𐍃 (laggs) and Old High German lang.^[6][1] Related forms with other vowels are Ancient Greek δολιχός (dolikhós, “long”), Sanskrit दीर्घ (dīrghá, “long”), Old Church Slavonic длъгъ (dlŭgŭ, “long”) and Lithuanian ilgas (“long”), and de Vaan suggests that all of them go back to an old compound that hardened into the word for “long”.^[6] Nocentini thinks that no single Indo-European form can be reconstructed for the whole group, in spite of the obvious likeness.^[3]

The vowel /u/ is Florentine: that dialect raised /o/ before a nasal followed by a consonant, and Devoto compares the Sienese and Florentine outcomes of the same sequence.^[3][7] An older Old Italian longo survives in Old Italian and in the dialects.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first dated sense is the temporal one, “lasting a long time”, in Giacomo da Lentini and Odo delle Colonne, poets of the Sicilian school who died before 1250;^[2][4] GRADIT dates the word by the same sense.^[2][4] The spatial sense, “extending lengthwise”, follows in Brunetto Latini (before 1294), whose Rettorica reports that some philosophers held the world to be round and others lungo (long, oblong).^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

A person lungo is tall and thin (14th century), a person who takes ages over something is slow (before 1400, Franco Sacchetti), and a drink made with a lot of water is weak or long: Francesco Redi used the sense before 1698, brodo lungo is recorded in 1840 and caffè lungo in 1869.^[2] In metrics and phonetics a long vowel or syllable is lunga (about 1438, Leon Battista Alberti).^[2] Old Italian could also use the word for “far away”, as in Cavalca and the Fioretti.^[11]

As a preposition lungo meant “close by, alongside” (before 1294, Latini) and “along the whole length of” (Dante), as in Petrarch's line “Lungo l'amate rive andai” (I walked along the beloved banks); Giordano da Pisa used it for “during” before 1311.^[2][12] From the preposition come the street names lungarno (before 1380), lungotevere (1925), lungolago (1932) and lungomare (1942), for the roads along a river, lake or the sea.^[2] Lungometraggio, a feature-length film, appears in 1939, and the physicists' lunghezza d'onda, wavelength, in 1908.^[2] German took lungo as a musical term for a held note.^[13]

Timeline

• Before 1250 – Giacomo da Lentini and Odo delle Colonne use lungo for “lasting a long time”.^[2][4]
• 1242–1243 – The derivative longeça (length) appears in the phrase longeça de vita.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses the adjective in space and the preposition for “alongside”.^[2]
• Before 1311 – Giordano da Pisa uses the preposition for “during”.^[2]
• Before 1380 – Lungarno, the street along the Arno, is recorded.^[2]
• About 1438 – Leon Battista Alberti uses lunga of a long vowel or syllable.^[2]
• 1869 – Caffè lungo is recorded in the Tommaseo–Bellini dictionary.^[2]
• 1939 – Lungometraggio (feature film) is first recorded.^[2]
• 1942 – Lungomare is first recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. long, having a given length: Il corridoio è lungo dieci metri.^[4][14][15]
2. Long, of more than the usual length; of clothes, reaching the feet or wrists: una sciarpa lunga, pantaloni lunghi.^[4][8][16]
3. (colloquial) tall and thin, of a person.^[4][14][15]
4. Lasting a long time, lengthy: Abbiamo fatto una lunga passeggiata.^[4][14][16]
5. (colloquial) slow, taking too long: Quanto sei lungo a prepararti!^[4][15]
6. Weak, made with more water than usual, of a drink: caffè lungo, brodo lungo.^[2][15]
7. Going beyond the target, of a shot or throw: palla lunga.^[4][15][16]
8. (phonetics, metrics) Long, of a vowel or syllable.^[2][15]

Preposition

1. along, alongside: Abbiamo camminato lungo il canale.^[8][14][1]
2. during, throughout: lungo tutta la sua vita.^[8][14]

Noun

1. length; in the phrases per il lungo (lengthwise) and in lungo e in largo (far and wide).^[1][17][15]

Word family

• lunghezza
• lungamente
• lungaggine
• lungagnata
• lunghesso
• lungarno
• lungomare
• lungolago
• lungofiume
• lungotevere
• lungometraggio
• allungare
• dilungare

Related words

• longevo
• longitudine
• longanime
• lontano
• lungi
• prolungare
• Latin longus
• French long

Usage notes

Common phrases are a lungo (for a long time), alla lunga (in the long run), di gran lunga (by far), andare per le lunghe (to drag on), saperla lunga (to be shrewd) and fare il passo più lungo della gamba (to bite off more than one can chew).^[4][15][9] The plural is lunghi, lunghe.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u 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 j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 9, 295
11. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 607
12. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 9, 301
13. ^ 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 e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b c d e f g h Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
16. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
17. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET, p. 2, 1913