massa

Forms

massa f (plural masse)^[1]

Etymology

DELI classes it as a learned word, borrowed from Latin massa (“dough; lump, mass”), whose first meaning, “dough”, Italian also had.^[2][3] Nocentini lists the Latin word with its Romance outcomes French masse, Occitan masa, Catalan massa, Spanish masa and Portuguese massa.^[4][5] Latin took it early, already in Plautus, from Ancient Greek μᾶζα (mâza, “barley cake”), a noun of μάσσω (mássō, “to knead”).^[4][6][1] Old Latin rendered the Greek ⟨ζ⟩ as /ss/; the borrowing may have come through Etruscan, and it is not known whether the Greek long vowel was kept.^[1] The Latin word soon took on wider senses than its Greek model.^[2]

The sense “crowd of people” goes back to Christian Latin: from Saint Paul's image of the potter who shapes vessels out of one lump of clay (Romans 9:21), the Church Fathers spoke of a “mass” of penitents or of sinners, and Augustine called mankind a “mass of sin”.^[2][4][7] In Late Latin and the Middle Ages the word also meant a group of farms forming one estate, the source of massaio, masseria and masserizia and of the many places called Massa.^[4][2][8] The political sense “the masses” is a borrowing from the French of the Revolution, which called the people to rise en masse.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is before 1250, in an anonymous poem in which God made a lady's face as if from a “mass of snow” (di neve fece massa): a lump of matter forming one compact whole.^[2][10][4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word named a heap of things of the same or different kinds (Dante, 1304–08), and a body of people (Giovanni Villani); old administrative senses were a group of farms, a body of goods and the yearly total of taxes.^[2][11][9] The sense “multitude” spread in the 18th and 19th centuries: in 1798 masse for groups of people was still a neologism, Leopardi calls it a “most graceful modern word” with irony, and Tommaseo in 1869 found le masse a sign of the age's materialism.^[2] The French Revolution, with Danton's call for the people to rise en masse, gave the word its political tone.^[2]

The 18th century brought the scientific senses: the quantity of matter in a body (1749) and the physical quantity that relates force to acceleration (before 1777); Parini mocked the fashion for such terms in Il Mezzogiorno.^[2] Painting used massa for a thickening of colour (before 1696), law for the assets of an estate (1656–57), and electrical engineering for the metal frame of a machine connected to earth (1946).^[2] Di massa in mezzi di comunicazione di massa renders English mass media, and uomo-massa renders mass man.^[2] In the Marche massa still means bread or pasta dough, the old Latin sense.^[12]

Timeline

• Before 1250 – An anonymous poet uses massa for a lump of snow.^[2][10]
• 1304–1308 – Dante uses massa for a heap of things.^[2]
• 1313–1319 – Dante uses the derivative masso “boulder”, its only occurrence in his work.^[2]
• 1656–1657 – Sforza Pallavicino uses massa in its legal sense, the assets of an estate.^[2]
• 1749 – Vincenzo Riccati uses massa for the quantity of matter in a body.^[2]
• 1798 – Masse for groups of people is recorded as a neologism.^[2]
• 1946 – Carlo Bernari uses the electrical sense of the metal frame connected to earth.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mass of matter forming a more or less compact whole, of no definite shape: una massa di argilla.^[3][6][13]
2. A heap or large amount of things; figuratively, a great many: una massa di bugie.^[3][14][13]
3. (sociology) A broad group of people sharing social, economic or political conditions; in the plural, the people as opposed to those in power: cultura di massa.^[3][6][14]
4. The majority of people, often disparaging: seguire la massa.^[3][6]
5. A crowd, multitude: in massa, all together.^[3][13][15]
6. (physics) The quantity of matter in a body, the measure of its inertia and of its gravitational attraction.^[14][2]
7. (electricity) The metal frame of an apparatus connected to earth: collegamento a massa.^[14][2]
8. (anatomy) In massa cerebrale, the brain; in massa sanguigna, the total blood of the body.^[13][15]

Word family

• masso
• massello
• massiccio
• massicciata
• massificare
• massificazione
• ammassare
• ammasso

Related words

• massivo
• massaio
• masseria
• masserizia
• Latin massa
• Ancient Greek μᾶζα (mâza)

Usage notes

An old adverb massa “very, much”, borrowed from Old Occitan masa, was used in the 14th century and survives in Venetian; it is a separate word.^[9][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2383
10. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 643
12. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
16. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET