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mille

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Pronunciation

Forms

mille (invariable; in compound numbers the plural is -mila: duemila, tremila)[1][2] Old Italian also had the plural Old Italian milia, which Tommaseo calls older than mila.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mīlle (“thousand”).[3][4][5][1] The word is found throughout Romance: French mille, Occitan mil, Catalan mil, Spanish mil, Portuguese mil and Sardinian milli, while Romanian mie continues the Latin plural mīlia.[4][6] The same plural gave the Italian compound form mila and Old Italian miglia, from which miglio “mile” comes.[7][1]

The origin of the Latin word is disputed: DELI quotes Ernout and Meillet's verdict that the explanations proposed are more ingenious than convincing.[3] De Vaan gives the most widely accepted one: Proto-Italic *smīɣeslī, from Proto-Indo-European *smih₂ǵʰéslih₂ (“one thousand”), literally “one heap”, which matches Sanskrit सहस्र (sahásra) and Ancient Greek χίλιοι (khílioi).[8][1] Nocentini notes instead that high numerals were not inherited from Indo-European, and suggests that the singular and the plural were variants of Latin milium (“millet”), so that the first meaning was “millet grains”.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Breve di Montieri, a Tuscan document of 1219, as the number of ten hundreds.[3][5][4] Giacomo da Lentini, before 1250, already uses it loosely for “very many” and Cielo d'Alcamo tells a lady that her wealth is worth less than “mill'onze” (a thousand ounces).[3][9]

Semantic evolution

The number soon stood for an indefinite great quantity, as in Dante's “a mille a mille” (by the thousand); Dante also used it as a noun between 1304 and 1308.[3][10] Phrases such as mille grazie, mille auguri and te l'ho detto mille volte continue this use.[5][11]

Il Mille became the name of the year 1000 and of the 11th century, and i Mille the thousand volunteers with whom Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860.[5][10] Many compounds use mille for “very many”: millepiedi “millipede” (1542), millefoglio “yarrow” (1542) and the cake millefoglie (1939–1940).[3] The learned prefix milli- of scientific measures (millimetro, 1799, milligrammo, 1910) comes from the same Latin word.[3]

Timeline

  • 1219 – Mille is recorded in the Breve di Montieri.[3]
  • Before 1250 – Giacomo da Lentini uses it for “very many”.[3]
  • 1304–1308 – Dante uses mille as a noun.[3]
  • 1374 – Petrarch uses millesimo “thousandth”.[3]
  • 1542 – Millepiedi and millefoglio appear in Mattioli's Dioscorides.[3]
  • 1799 – Millimetro is recorded.[3]
  • 1860 – Garibaldi's volunteers become known as i Mille.[5]

Meanings

Numeral

  1. A thousand, ten hundreds (1000, Roman M): un'auto da trentamila euro, mille metri.[5][12][13]
  2. (hyperbolic) Very many, countless: Oggi ho mille impegni; in greetings and thanks: mille grazie, grazie mille.[5][12][11]
  3. After a noun, with ordinal value: pagina mille, l'anno mille.[5][13][10]

Noun

  1. The number one thousand and the sign for it.[5][13]
  2. il Mille: the year 1000; also the 11th century.[5][10]
  3. i Mille: Garibaldi's thousand volunteers of the 1860 expedition to Sicily.[5][10]

Word family

  • millennio
  • millenario
  • millesimo
  • millepiedi
  • millefoglie
  • millefoglio
  • millefiori
  • millimetro
  • milligrammo
  • mila
  • miglio
  • migliaio
  • Latin mīlle

Usage notes

Mille is invariable; its plural in compound numbers is mila (duemila, diecimila).[2][1] Set phrases include a mille a mille (in great numbers), andare a mille (to go flat out) and da mille e una notte (fabulous, as in the Thousand and One Nights).[5][12][11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 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 k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  7. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  9. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 10, 406
  10. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  11. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  12. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  13. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse