minugia

Forms

minugia f (plural minugie)^[1] Old Italian also has a masculine Old Italian minugio.^[2][3] In Venetian the word is menuza.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin minūtia (“smallness; small part”), applied to the small parts of slaughtered animals.^{[5][6][3][7][1]} The Latin word is derived from minūtus (“small”) with the suffix -ia.^[8][1]

The consonant shows that the word came to Tuscan from the north: Latin /tj/ was voiced in northern Italy and then adapted to Tuscan ⟨gi⟩.^[6][3][9][7] Meyer-Lübke saw the source in menuza “junk, gut, gut string”.^[4] The same Latin word gave Piedmontese mnis “sweepings” and Spanish menuza.^[4]

It is a doublet of the learned minuzia and of minuzza, and its meaning parted from theirs.^[1][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT and Nocentini date the word to the first half of the 13th century.^[10][6] DELI's first records, with the sense “guts, entrails”, are the Italian version of Pietro Ispano and Dante's Inferno: Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia “between his legs his guts were hanging”.^[5][7]

Semantic evolution

From the guts of animals the word passed to the strings made from sheep's gut for musical instruments, recorded before 1565 in Varchi.^[5] In medicine it later named a thin catheter for the urethra, and a fine thread for sutures.^[10][11][12] Tommaseo marks the word as out of use in his time, but notes that minugie “guts” survived in Corsican.^[2] The dialects keep the older sense of “small things” too, as Venetian menusa (16th century) shows.^[3]

Timeline

• First half of the 13th century – GRADIT's and Nocentini's date of first record.^[10][6]
• 14th century – Minugia “guts” appears in the Italian version of Pietro Ispano.^[5]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses le minugia in the Inferno.^[5][13]
• Before 1565 – Varchi uses the word for gut strings of musical instruments.^[5]
• 17th century – Minugiaio is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary, mostly plural) guts, entrails, budella.^{[10][14][13][1]}
2. (music) Sheep's gut used, especially in the past, for the strings of some musical instruments; catgut: Il liutaio montò sul violino corde di minugia.^{[10][14][13][1]}
3. (medicine) A thin urethral catheter.^{[10][11][13][15]}
4. (medicine) A fine thread for sutures.^[10][12]

Word family

• minugiaio

Related words

• minuzia
• sminuzzare
• minuzza
• minuto
• Latin minutia

Usage notes

The plural is invariable (le minugia) or minugie or minuge.^[13][11][7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
3. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2467
4. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
5. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 10, 475
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 283
10. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
13. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ 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
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana