melo

Forms

melo m (plural meli)^[1] The texts also have Old Italian mello and the southern Old Italian melu.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *melus (“apple tree”), the late form of Latin mālus (“apple tree”).^[1][3][4] Late Latin mēlum (“apple”), recorded from the 4th century and already found in Petronius, stands beside the classical mālum.^[3][5][6] Latin took the Greek word for the apple twice: first Ancient Greek μᾶλον (mâlon), the Doric form, which gave the classical word, and later μῆλον (mêlon, “apple; apple tree”), the Attic form, which gave the late one.^[4][3][7] The Romance words all go back to the later form.^[6][8]

Latin told the tree from its fruit by gender, with a feminine tree name in ⟨-us⟩ beside a neuter fruit name in ⟨-um⟩.^[4][1] Italian kept the distinction in its own way: the feminine tree name became masculine, and the neuter plural ⟨mēla⟩ became the feminine singular mela, the fruit.^[4][3]

The same word is Sardinian mela in Sardinian, Romansh mail and Romanian măr.^[4][8] The DÉRom reconstructs a Proto-Romance feminine noun for the apple tree, continued in Sardinian, Romanian, Italian, Friulian and Ladin, either refitted as a feminine in ⟨-a⟩ or turned into a masculine.^[9]

The Greek word itself has no clear origin: Battisti and Alessio call it a Mediterranean word and compare the name of the island of Melos, and the Zingarelli calls it pre-Indo-European.^[5][10] Wiktionary traces it, probably, to a substrate.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Miracole de Roma, a mid-13th-century text in Roman dialect, in a passage on the melo “where the bones of Caesar lie”, which the TLIO files under the tree sense.^[2] The sense is the apple tree, the usual tree that bears round fruit with whitish flesh and red, yellow or green skin.^[2] Restoro d'Arezzo lists it in 1282 among the trees with the pear, the pine and the ash.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the 14th century the word is common in Tuscan writing on farming: the vernacular Palladio advises sowing apple trees in February or March, and the vernacular Crescenzi notes that their kinds are many and that experience shows which suit each district.^[11] Boccaccio uses it from 1341–42.^[3] The Old Italian record also has a decorative round element in architecture, and melo terra for the root of the cyclamen.^[2]

Battisti and Alessio place the word in Tuscany, Liguria, Romagna, the Marche, Lazio and the South, while in the North it gave way to pomo.^[5] Meyer-Lübke too says that pomo took over in southern Italy, Sicily and parts of the North, where the old word survives only in place names.^[8]

Compounds name related trees: melo cotogno is the quince, melo granato the pomegranate.^[12][13] The pomegranate tree was first named in the plural meligrani about 1340, and the fruit is melagrana, a shortening of melagranata, close to Latin mālum grānātum.^[3]

Timeline

• Mid-13th century – Melo is recorded in the Miracole de Roma.^[2]
• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo names the melo among other trees.^[2]
• About 1340 – The plural meligrani “pomegranate trees” appears in the vernacular Palladio.^[3]
• 1341–1342 – Boccaccio uses melo.^[3]
• 1348–1353 – Boccaccio uses mela for the fruit.^[3]
• 16th century – The singular melagrano is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The apple tree, a fruit tree of the rose family with white or pink flowers, grown in many varieties for its fruit, the mela.^[14][12][15]
2. (botany) Any tree of the genus Malus; with a capital, the genus itself.^[14]
3. melo di Sodoma: the Sodom apple, a poisonous shrub of Africa and Asia (Calotropis procera).^[12]

Word family

• meleto
• melograno
• melocotogno
• meluggine

Related words

• mela
• melagrana
• melarancia
• pomo
• Latin mālus

Usage notes

A separate, literary and obsolete melo, with an open /ɛ/, means “song, poetry”: it is a learned borrowing of Latin melos, from Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos), first recorded before 1492 in Lorenzo de' Medici, and Ariosto writes of the age when he was ready for the “Pegasean song” (pegaseo melo).^{[14][11][1][12]} The French loan mélo, stressed on the last syllable, means “melodrama”.^[14][10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2417
6. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
10. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 10, 28
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
15. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse