marangone

Forms

marangone m (plural marangoni)^[1] Older forms are Old Italian maragone and Old Italian marragone.^[2][3]

Etymology

The word for the diving bird is inherited from Vulgar Latin *mergō (“diver”), recorded in Medieval Latin, an enlargement of Latin mergus (“diving seabird”).^[4][2][5][1] Nocentini describes ⟨e⟩ opening to ⟨a⟩ before ⟨r⟩, then maragone (still in Oudin) and finally the present form with an intrusive nasal.^[4] DELI, DEI and GRADIT instead see the influence of the Old French name of the cormorant, *marenc, literally “sea crow” (Old French cormareg, 12th century, DEI's corb mareng).^[2][6][5][7] The same Latin derivative gave Sicilian marguni and Sicilian maraguni, Ligurian magrun, Sardinian margone and Old Occitan margon.^[8][4]

Latin mergus is probably a deverbal noun of mergō (“to plunge, dip”), the bird that dives.^[9][1][10] The verb goes back to Proto-Italic *mezgō and Proto-Indo-European *mesg- (“to sink, wash”).^[9][1]

For the Venetian sense “carpenter”, the usual view derives it from the bird, through the divers who repaired ships under water.^{[11][7][12][13][6]} Petrolini (1996) rejected this: for him the word named the man who uses the marangona, the large carpenter's axe, and DELI finds his arguments good.^[2] Nocentini also separates the carpenter's name from the bird's: it is a northern derivative of the axe's name, recorded at Venice in 1271 with the Medieval Latin form marangonus, which comes from marra (“hoe”) (the axe's blade is set across the handle like a hoe's), with the suffix -anca and an augmentative suffix.^[4] On this view the bird's name and the carpenter's name met by chance.^[4] Treccani calls the origin of this sense uncertain.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest Italian record is in Ciacco dell'Anguillaia, in the 13th century, for a shipwright: né no son marangone (nor am I a shipwright).^[3][5] The bird, a merganser or other diving bird, appears as maragone in Simintendi's Ovid, before 1333, and as marangone in Boccaccio.^[2][4][15]

Semantic evolution

In Venice the marangoni were the master shipwrights of the Arsenal, and the word spread to carpenters in general; it still means “joiner” in the dialects of the Veneto and the north-east and survives in the common surname Marangoni.^[5][14] From Venetian it passed into Modern Greek as marankós and on into Turkish as marangoz.^[6] From the 15th and 16th centuries the word also named men trained to work under water, such as divers who recovered sunken objects or repaired hulls.^[6][7][3]

For the bird, Redi wrote that the merghi are commonly called marangoni,^[16] and Savi applied the word to the cormorant in zoology (before 1871).^[2] Today it names the cormorant and smaller birds of the same family, such as the marangone dal ciuffo, the shag.^[14]

Timeline

• 13th century – Ciacco dell'Anguillaia uses marangone for a shipwright.^[3][5]
• 1271 – Marangona “carpenter's axe” and the Latinised marangonus are recorded at Venice.^[4][6]
• 1314 – Francesco da Barberino writes marragoni for shipwrights.^[4][3]
• Before 1333 – Maragone names a diving bird in Simintendi's Ovid.^[4][2]
• 15th century – The sense “diver” appears.^[6]
• Before 1871 – Savi uses marangone for the cormorant.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (zoology) The cormorant and other birds of the family Phalacrocoracidae, such as the marangone dal ciuffo (the shag).^[5][7][14]
2. (historical) A master shipwright of the Venetian Arsenal.^[5][7]
3. (northern Italy) A carpenter or joiner.^[5][11][14]
4. (historical, nautical) A man trained to work under water, a diver.^[5][7][12]

Word family

• marangona

Related words

• smergo
• mergo
• marra
• Latin mergus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ 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, p. 9, 763
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2359
7. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
14. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 9, 762
16. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET