lupino

Forms

lupino m (plural lupini)^[1] As an adjective it has the feminine lupina and the plurals lupini, lupine.^[2] An old literary variant of the adjective is lupigno.^[3][4] Early forms of the noun include Old Italian lopino, Old Italian lovin and Old Italian luvini.^[5]

Etymology

The noun is borrowed from Latin lupīnus, a learned word.^[1][3][6] The Latin word was an adjective, “of a wolf”, formed from Latin lupus (“wolf”) + -inus, and it was already used as a noun for the plant by Cato.^[7][8][9][1] The Italian adjective is the same Latin adjective, which DEI calls learned, while the TLIO and Zingarelli treat it as formed from lupo.^{[4][10][5][3]}

Why the lupin was called the wolf's plant is unclear.^[11][10][2] DELI suggests a plant that “devours”, comparing lupa in the sense “rot of the olive tree”.^[7] Nocentini sees a legume of little worth as human food, like German Wolfsbohne (“wolf bean”), a name copied in Italian dialects such as Venetian fava luìna at Verona.^[12] The OLD thinks of the bitterness of the seeds, and an older explanation recorded by Prati was that its thick leaves kill the plants growing nearby.^[9][13]

Popular outcomes of the Latin word live on in the north and south: Lombard lüvin in Lombardy, Emilian anvein at Parma and Sicilian luppina, beside Catalan llobí.^[14] Old French louvin meant “wolf-like”, and French lupin is recorded from the 13th century.^[14][4][6] Latin lupus has no certain etymology: it is traced either to Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos (“wolf”) through a Sabellic form with metathesis, or to a root for “marten” or “fox”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT and Devoto–Oli date the adjective to the first half of the 13th century, and the TLIO's first quotation for it is in Alberto della Piagentina's Florentine translation of Boethius (1322–1332).^[15][10][5] The noun first appears in a Prato document of 1293–1306, and the derivative lupinari (“lupin fields”) in a text of 1295–1296.^[5][7] DELI's first literary record of the plant is in Domenico Cavalca, before 1342.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the lupin seed was eaten after soaking and was also used in medicines.^[5] Because it was small and cheap, it stood for “the least thing”, often in negative phrases meaning “nothing at all”, and white and black lupins served as tokens in voting.^[5] Medieval farming texts such as the volgarizzamento of Crescenzi already describe its cultivation.^[6]

Later, the round seed lent its name to other things: an eye disease of hens, in which the eyes swell into the shape of lupins (recorded in 1863, with the variant lupinello from 1768), and a callo between the toes, a sense still used in Tuscany, Umbria, the Marche, Lazio and the Abruzzi.^[4][16][17] In Ferrara lupini are small balls of fried dough eaten at Carnival.^[15][11]

The adjective kept the sense “of a wolf, like a wolf”, and in the 19th century it also described a horse's coat of the colour of a wolf's hair.^[5][16] Botany extended the noun to the whole genus Lupinus, with yellow, blue and ornamental species beside the white lupin.^[11][6]

Timeline

• 1200–1250 – The adjective lupino “of a wolf” is first recorded.^[15][10]
• 1293–1306 – The noun appears in a Prato document.^[5]
• 1295–1296 – Lupinari “lupin fields” is recorded.^[7]
• 1322–1332 – Alberto della Piagentina uses the adjective in his translation of Boethius.^[5]
• Before 1342 – Domenico Cavalca uses lupino for the plant.^[7]
• 14th century – Lupinella appears in a translation of Pietro Ispano.^[7]
• 1618 – Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger uses lupinaio “seller of lupins”.^[7]
• 1768 – Lupinello, the eye disease of hens, is recorded.^[4][13]

Meanings

Noun

1. lupin seed: the round yellow seed of the white lupin, eaten after its bitter substance has been removed by boiling or long soaking in salted water: Al mercato ha comprato un cartoccio di lupini.^[15][10][18]
2. The white lupin (Lupinus albus), a Mediterranean legume grown for its seeds and as fodder.^[15][10][3]
3. (botany) Any plant of the genus Lupinus, with pods holding several seeds, and, with a capital, the genus itself.^[15][2][11]
4. (regional, usually in the plural) A fried dough sweet of the Ferrara area, made at Carnival.^[15][11]
5. (figurative) A corn between the toes, also called occhio di pernice.^[15][18][11]

Adjective

1. Of a wolf, like a wolf, wolfish: fame lupina.^{[15][10][2][19]}
2. (of a horse's coat) Having hair yellow at the base and black at the tip: baio lupino.^[15][10][11]
3. (zoology) dente lupino: the small front premolar of dogs and other canids.^[19][11]
4. (popular) gola lupina: cleft palate.^[19][11]
5. (regional) erba lupina: crimson clover.^[10][11][18]

Word family

• lupinaio
• lupinella
• lupinello

Related words

• lupo
• lupa
• lupesco
• Latin lupinus
• French lupin

Usage notes

Lupino rosso is another name for the sulla, a different leguminous plant.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
3. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2288
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
6. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
12. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 607
14. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
15. ^ 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
16. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
17. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET
18. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
19. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana