macinare

Forms

macinare (first-person singular present màcino, first-person singular past historic macinài, past participle macinàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian maccinare, Old Italian macenare, Old Italian masenare, Old Italian masinare and Old Italian mazinare.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin māchinō (“to grind”), a Late Latin verb formed on māchina (“machine; millstone”).^{[4][5][6][7][1]} Written Latin had only the deponent māchinor in the figurative sense “to devise, plot”; the active verb with the concrete sense “to grind” is the spoken form the Romance languages continue.^[8][9] The miller's millstone was the machine above all others, and the noun macina “millstone” continues a spoken Latin *mācina, the popular counterpart of the learned macchina.^[4][5] The TLIO takes the verb as formed in Italian on that noun instead, and Devoto saw a Late Latin form of the deponent crossed with it.^[3][10] Its learned doublet is macchinare, borrowed from Latin.^[1][11]

The same verb is Romanian măcina, Dalmatian macnur, Sardinian maginare and Friulian masanâ, and in the north Venetian maxenar; the DEI describes its area as Italian, Romanian, Dalmatian, Logudorese and Romansh.^[12][1][13]

The Latin noun is a very early borrowing of Ancient Greek μαχανά (makhaná, “device, machine”), the Doric form of μηχανή (mēkhanḗ): the reduction of the unstressed /a/ to /i/ shows how old the loan is.^[1][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Medieval Latin documents have masenare at Bobbio in 1192.^[4] The TLIO's first Italian record is a Veronese document of 1205, a date it marks as uncertain;^[3][5][4][2] DELI's first is the Statute of the Hospital of Siena of 1318, in the sense “to grind into flour with the millstone”: the official is to have the grain cleaned and sent to the mill, e farlo macinare, e farne fare farina (“and have it ground, and have flour made of it”).^[3][5][4][2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was used of crushing grain or olives with the millstone, of the mill itself as its stones turned, and figuratively of attending steadily to some task; by extension it meant to crush something over and over until it was destroyed, and was said of teeth or a file working on a hard body.^[3] The sense “to grind fine in a mortar or a small mill” is recorded at the start of the 15th century in Cennino Cennini, and a Latin deed from Verona repeats the participle masenao a century earlier.^[4] Travellers used it for the mills of distant lands: Ca' da Mosto tells of sixty water-driven mills grinding sugar cane, and Ramusio of cacao seeds ground to powder.^[2]

Boccaccio already used it jokingly of sexual intercourse, an old use that the dictionaries still mark as jocular.^[7][6] Proverbs speak of the mill: Tuscan chi è primo al mulino, primo macini (first at the mill, first to grind) and acqua passata non macina più (water that has gone by grinds no more), said of feelings or chances that have lost their force.^[14][7] Macinare chilometri, to walk or travel a long way without stopping, is recorded from 1957, and sports journalism speaks of a team that macina gioco.^[4][15][6]

Timeline

• 1192 – Medieval Latin masenare is recorded at Bobbio.^[4]
• 1205 – A Veronese document has the verb, according to the TLIO, which queries the date.^[3][5]
• 1283 – Medieval Latin masenare is recorded at Venice.^[4]
• 1318 – The Statute of the Hospital of Siena has macinare “to grind into flour”.^[4][2]
• Early 15th century – Cennino Cennini uses it for grinding fine in a mortar.^[4]
• 1957 – Macinare chilometri is recorded in the Dizionario enciclopedico.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To grind or mill: to reduce grain, coffee, pepper and the like to flour, powder or small grains with a millstone or another tool: Al mulino macinavano l'orzo per le bestie.^[6][16][7]
2. To crush olives in a press; to mince meat.^[6][7][1]
3. (printing) To refine ink between rollers before inking the formes.^[6][7]
4. (figurative) To carry on an activity at a steady, fast pace, as in macinare chilometri, to cover long distances without stopping.^{[6][16][11][15]}
5. (figurative) To brood over, turn a thought over and over obsessively: Da giorni macina quel vecchio torto.^[16][11][15]
6. (figurative, uncommon) To squander money, spend it as fast as it comes.^[16][11][7]
7. (figurative, uncommon) To beat someone up.^[6][16][7]
8. (jocular) To have sexual intercourse.^[6][7]

Word family

• macinabile
• macinato
• macinatoio
• macinatore
• macinatura
• macinazione
• macinio
• macinamento
• rimacinare
• macinino
• macinacaffè
• macinapepe

Related words

• macina
• macchina
• macchinare
• Latin machina

Usage notes

Macinare a due palmenti (to grind with two millstones) means to eat greedily, or to make too much money dishonestly.^[7][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
3. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
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 d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 266
11. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
13. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2300
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
16. ^ 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
17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli