olivastro

Forms

olivastro (feminine olivastra, masculine plural olivastri, feminine plural olivastre)^[1] The variant ulivastro is used beside olivastro for both the tree and the colour.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

The name of the wild olive and the colour adjective are traced to the olive in two different ways.^[5][6][2]

The tree name is from Latin oleaster (“wild olive”), reshaped after olivo.^[5][2][7][6] GRADIT and the GDLI see it as the Italian oleastro crossed with the olive tree (GRADIT: with the fruit, oliva).^[6][8] Sabatini–Coletti agrees, and also lists the rarer variant oliastro.^[3] The Latin word is olea (“olive tree”) with the suffix -aster.^[9][1] The same Latin word gave Sicilian aggyastru and Catalan ullastre.^[10]

The adjective, “olive-coloured”, is formed from Italian oliva + -astro, the suffix of colour adjectives such as biancastro, giallastro and nerastro.^{[11][6][12][1][13]} The DEI compares French olivâtre, recorded from 1575.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO lists olivastro as a form of oleastro, the wild olive, first recorded in Ciampolo di Meo Ugurgieri, in Sienese, before 1340: qui era stato uno olivastro co le foglie amare consecrato a Fauno, “here had been a wild olive with bitter leaves, sacred to Faunus”.^[15][8] The colour adjective is first recorded in Antonio Pigafetta in 1525, describing people who were “not wholly black, but olive-coloured”.^[11][13]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the wild olive was also a figure of the unconverted: a vernacular Augustine speaks of the ulivastro grafted on the good olive and sharing its richness.^[8] In the regions the name passed to shrubs that look like the wild olive, such as privet, buckthorn (alaterno) and the phillyreas; the DEI says the name first belonged to Phillyrea latifolia and was later given to plants of other families.^[6][4][14]

The adjective has been used above all of skin: it described the peoples of distant lands in 16th- and 17th-century travel writing and history, Le genti sono di colore olivastro in Serdonati.^[16][13] It is also a noun, for the colour itself and for people with olive skin.^[6][7]

Timeline

• Before 1340 – Ugurgieri has olivastro for the wild olive.^[15][8]
• 1525 – Pigafetta uses olivastro as a colour adjective for skin.^[11][6]
• 1575 – French olivâtre is recorded.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a brownish olive-green colour, like an olive; said especially of the complexion: aveva la pelle olivastra e gli occhi scuri.^{[6][2][3][12]}
2. (by extension) Of a person: having skin of that colour.^[6][7]

Noun

1. The olive-green colour itself, especially of skin.^[6][7]
2. (botany) The wild olive (Olea europaea sylvestris), a thorny, bushy olive growing wild on Mediterranean coasts and used as a rootstock for cultivated olives; oleastro.^[6][2][3][4]
3. (regional) Any of several shrubs resembling the wild olive, such as privet, alaterno and the phillyreas.^[6][4][7]

Related words

• oliva
• olivo
• oleastro
• Latin oleaster

Usage notes

Dictionaries such as GRADIT, Nocentini, Zingarelli and Treccani give the tree and the colour as two numbered headwords, since the tree name comes from Latin oleaster and the adjective was formed in Italian from oliva.^{[6][5][12][4]}

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
4. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 11, 878
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 11, 879
14. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2640
15. ^ a b Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
16. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET