ondoso

Forms

ondoso (feminine ondosa, masculine plural ondosi, feminine plural ondose)^[1] It was also written Old Italian undose in the feminine plural.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin undōsus (“full of waves”), formed from unda (“wave”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[3][4][1][5] Wiktionary treats it as taken from Latin, while Meyer-Lübke and Körting list it among the Romance outcomes of the Latin adjective, beside Romanian undos, Old Occitan ondos, Spanish undoso and Portuguese undoso;^[1][6][7][8] the older Spanish form was Old Spanish ondoso.^[1][6][7][8]

The Latin noun, meaning “wave, sea”, is the Indo-European word for water, as in Ancient Greek ὕδωρ (húdōr).^[9] De Vaan explains the feminine ⟨-a⟩ and the sense “wave” from a collective meaning “body of water”, which was later taken as a singular.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Florentine Epistole eroiche of Ceffi (1320–1330), where it describes the sea furrowed and stirred by waves.^[2] DELI dates the sense “full of waves” to Boccaccio, about 1336.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian ondoso was said of the sea, often in a figurative context, and of ground covered with water.^[2] An early prose text quoted by Tommaseo has ships tangled among gli ondosi cavalli, “the horses of the waves”, and Annibal Caro's Aeneid has l'ondoso mar.^[11] The sense “of the waves, marine” appears in Salvini in 1728, who calls the sea gods ondosi Numi.^[10][11] Buonarroti used it to mean “wet, drenched” (di sangue ondosi, “drenched in blood”), a sense now obsolete.^[11][12]

Literary Italian later used it for anything that undulates: Carducci calls hair ondosa, and D'Annunzio uses it of rising hay.^[3] Today the commonest use is the phrase moto ondoso, the movement of the waves, in weather and sea bulletins.^[13][14]

Timeline

• 1320–1330 – Ceffi uses ondose of the sea.^[2]
• About 1336 – Boccaccio uses ondoso “full of waves”.^[10][12]
• 1728 – Salvini uses it for “of the waves, of the sea”.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to the waves, especially of the sea; chiefly in moto ondoso “wave motion”.^[3][5][13]
2. Stirred by waves, rough: Il lago era ondoso e grigio.^[3][5][15]
3. (literary) wavy, undulating; swaying like waves.^[3][5][12]
4. (obsolete) Wet, drenched.^[12][11]

Word family

• ondosità

Related words

• onda
• ondata
• Latin unda

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2654
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c d Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana