oziaco

Forms

oziaco (feminine oziaca, masculine plural oziaci, feminine plural oziache)^[1]

Etymology

Most dictionaries take it as borrowed from Spanish aciago (“ill-omened”) (also spelled aziago), which comes from Latin Aegyptiacus (“Egyptian”) in the phrase diēs Aegyptiacī (“Egyptian days”), the unlucky days of the calendar.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Gabrielli adds that the word was drawn towards ozio “idleness” by popular association.^[5]

The LEI, the TLIO and the GDLI explain it within Italian as an altered form of egiziaco, reshaped by folk etymology after the word for idleness, because no work was to be started on those days.^[7][8][9] For the LEI the shift of stress comes from adjectives in ⟨-aco⟩ such as opaco and ubriaco, and it is confirmed by Catalan atziac, by the Spanish word (in Berceo, about 1255) and by Portuguese aziago.^[7] Tommaseo also calls it a corruption of the word for Egyptian.^[10]

The belief in the Egyptian days goes back to the old lunar calendar of Egypt, in which two days of each month were unlucky; it entered the Roman calendar and many medieval calendars up to the 14th century.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT dates the word before 1311, and the GDLI quotes Fra Giordano saying that the dì oziachi are nothing and that it is great folly to believe in them.^[2][9] The first text in the TLIO is Pucci's Libro of 1362, which explains the dì oziachi, also called egiziachi, as twenty-four days, two in each month, “made in Egypt”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word was used mainly in the phrase dì oziachi (or the singular dì oziaco), the unlucky days of the year; the TLIO records it only in Florentine texts.^[8] Sacchetti's characters use it, and in his poems he extended it to whole periods, complaining that fortune turns “so many ill-starred years” (tanti oziachi anni) against him.^[8][9] Burchiello warned gouty men not to eat cherries on such days, and Saint Antoninus warned against choosing the day to begin a task by whether it was oziaco.^[9][10]

Today the word is rare and archaic.^[2][3]

Timeline

• Before 1311 – First record.^[2][3]
• 1362 – Pucci explains the dì oziachi in his Libro.^[8]
• Late 14th century – Sacchetti uses dì oziaco and speaks of oziachi anni.^[8]
• Before 1449 – Burchiello uses dì oziachi.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (archaic) unlucky, ill-omened, said of days or periods of time: giorni oziaci, the same as giorni egiziaci, the days held to be unlucky.^[2][3][4][1]
2. (archaic, by extension) Marked by misfortune, inauspicious, of a year or time in general.^[8][4][5]

Related words

• egiziaco
• ozio
• Spanish aciago
• Latin Aegyptiacus

Usage notes

The stress may fall on the i or on the a (ozìaco or oziàco), and the masculine plural is oziaci or oziachi.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
5. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
6. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975)
7. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 1, 974
8. ^ a b c d e f g Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
9. ^ 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. 12, 305
10. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET