mezzadro

Forms

mezzadro m (plural mezzadri, feminine mezzadra)^[1] Old Venetian and Modenese texts write Old Italian meçadro.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin mediātor (“intermediary”), through the nominative, in a northern form: the word seems to have spread from Emilia, where it is Emilian mesàder.^{[3][4][5][1][6]} The Latin agent noun came to mean the one who divides in half with the owner.^[3][7][8] It is formed from Latin mediō (“to divide in half”), from medius (“middle”).^[3][9][1] The ending matches Venetian avogadro, from avocātor.^[4]

DELI first sets out a spoken Vulgar Latin *mediārius, from the same adjective, influenced by the Late Latin noun for an intermediary, and then grants that the nominative alone could explain the word, as D'Ovidio proposed in 1896.^[4] Sabatini–Coletti, Zingarelli and Gabrielli prefer a blend of the spoken form with the Late Latin noun.^[10][11][12] The TLIO takes it from Late Latin mediārius, with the suffix changed from ⟨-aro⟩ to ⟨-adro⟩.^[2]

The word is a doublet of mediatore.^[1] Other Romance names for the sharecropper are French métayer, Spanish mediero and Sicilian mitateri.^[1] The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos.^[1][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are northern: the Venetian Gospels of the first half of the 14th century and a Modenese document of 1374, with the sense “one who works a farm and pays the owner half the harvest”.^[2] In Tuscan the word is found in the 15th-century poem Letilogia, and DELI's first dated record is by Giulio de' Medici in 1516–1520.^[4][14]

Semantic evolution

Tommaseo still marked the word as obsolete, quoting Trinci's description of the sharecroppers of the Modena area who pruned their chestnut trees every three years, and gave a second sense, anyone who shares something with another.^[14] After the Civil Code of 1865 listed mezzaiuolo, mezzadro, massaro and colono as synonyms, mezzadro and mezzadria gained ground.^[4]

Mezzadria, the sharecropping contract, is recorded from 1562, and mezzadrile from 1771.^[3] The contract has since been abolished in Italy.^[5][15] English recorded the Italian word in 1882.^[16]

Timeline

• First half of the 14th century – The Venetian Gospels have the word.^[2]
• 1374 – A Modenese document has it.^[2]
• 15th century – The Tuscan poem Letilogia uses it.^[4][14]
• 1488 – Nocentini's first date.^[3]
• 1516–1520 – Giulio de' Medici uses the word.^[4]
• 1562 – Mezzadria is recorded.^[3]
• 1865 – The Civil Code lists the word among the names of the tenant farmer.^[4]
• 1882 – The word is recorded in English.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. sharecropper: a farmer, or the head of a farming family, who works another's land under a mezzadria contract and shares the produce with the owner.^{[15][7][10][11][5][1]}

Word family

• mezzadria
• mezzadrile

Related words

• mezzo
• mediatore
• Latin medius

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
6. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
11. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ a b De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
16. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it