matassa

Forms

matassa f (plural matasse)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian madassa and Old Italian matazza.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mataxa (“rough thread, cord”), beside metaxa.^[3][4][5][1] Latin took the word as early as the 2nd century BC from Ancient Greek μάταξα (mátaxa) or μέταξα (métaxa, “raw silk”), a late Greek word that DELI calls of unknown foreign origin and Nocentini considers a loan from the East.^[3][4][6] In the Latin glosses it already means “rope, cord”.^[7] The meaning that lives on in the Romance languages, a skein of thread, appears in the Latin medical text known as the Antidotarium Bruxellense, of about the 6th century.^[3]

The same word is Old French maaisse, Occitan madaisa, Catalan madeixa, Spanish madeja and Portuguese madeixa.^[4][8] The Campidano dialect of Sardinia has Sardinian madassa, and it passed into Basque as matasa.^[8][7] Körting and Wiktionary add Romanian mătase, which means “silk”.^[9][1] The word Sicilian matassaru, a reel for winding thread, is used in Sicily, at Taranto and in Calabria.^[8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The diminutive matassella appears in a Medieval Latin document from Alatri in 1287.^[3] The TLIO's first Italian record is in the statutes of Siena of 1298, where the word means a quantity of thread wound up on itself or on a support.^[10] DELI's first literary example is Boccaccio (1362–1364).^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Boccaccio mocks idle talk about quanta cenere vi voglia a cuocere una matassa d'accia, “how much ash it takes to boil a skein of linen thread”.^[2][11] The figurative sense “tangle, intrigue” appears in Giordano Bruno's comedy Candelaio (1582); DEI dates it to the 16th century.^[3][7] Later uses include a kind of thin pasta wound in a skein (1891), and in electrical engineering the set of turns of a winding in a dynamo.^[3][5]

The image of the skein gave several set phrases: the bandolo della matassa (the loose end of the skein) is the clue that solves a problem, to arruffare or imbrogliare la matassa is to complicate things, and to dipanare or sbrogliare la matassa is to sort them out.^[5][12][13] French borrowed the word as matasse (1675), raw unspun silk.^[14][7]

Timeline

• 1287 – The diminutive matassella is recorded in Medieval Latin at Alatri.^[3]
• 1298 – Matassa appears in the statutes of Siena.^[10]
• 1362–1364 – Boccaccio uses the word.^[3][5]
• 1582 – Giordano Bruno uses it figuratively for an intrigue.^[3]
• 1675 – French matasse is first recorded.^[14]
• 1891 – Matassa is recorded as a kind of thin pasta.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A skein or hank: a quantity of yarn or thread wound in regular coils: una matassa di seta rossa.^[5][15][16]
2. By extension, a coil or tangle of long, thin things: una matassa di fili, of hair or pasta.^[5][15][13]
3. (figurative) A tangle, a muddle or intricate situation.^[5][15][12]
4. (electrical engineering) The set of turns of a winding in a dynamo or electric machine.^[5][15][16]
5. (anatomy) matassa intestinale: the small intestine, coiled in the abdomen.^[15]
6. The string game cat's cradle, also called ripiglino.^[5]

Word family

• matassina
• ammatassare
• smatassare
• matassare

Related words

• Latin mataxa
• French matasse

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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 g h i j k Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2388
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ a b Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
15. ^ 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
16. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse