padella

Forms

padella f (plural padelle)^[1] Old Italian forms include padela and patella.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin patella (“dish, small pan”), the diminutive of patera (“broad flat dish, bowl”).^[3][4][5] The Oxford Latin Dictionary and Wiktionary derive the Latin word from patina (“shallow dish, pan”) with the diminutive suffix instead.^[6][1] The Latin word has given Old French paelle (modern French poêle), Occitan padella, Catalan paella and Spanish padilla.^[4][7] Logudorese has Sardinian padedda “cooking pot”, and the Latin word passed into Celtic, as Welsh padell.^[7][8]

The /d/ for Latin /t/ is the northern voicing of a consonant between vowels: the word reached Tuscan from the dialects of northern Italy.^[9][10][8] According to DEI the word spread south as well, where it pushes out the last survivors of Latin sartāgo (“frying pan”) and frixoria.^[8]

The hunters' sense “missed shot” is explained in two ways.^[3][4] Pisani took it as a popular adaptation of German Pudel (“blunder”), and Sabatini–Coletti mention this view as possible.^[3][10] Nocentini traces it to a phrase meaning “to get a refusal”, with an empty kitchen pot standing for failure, as in fiasco.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is recorded first in Medieval Latin, as padela in a document from Piacenza of 1266.^[3] The first Italian record is a document from Prato of 1288–1290, and DELI and GRADIT give the sermons of Giordano da Pisa (1302–1305).^[2][3][5] The sense is the kitchen pan: round, shallow and with a long handle, used above all for frying.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already used the word for a pan with a perforated bottom for roasting chestnuts, for an instrument of torture on which people were burnt, for a vessel used in distilling, for a basin, and for the kneecap.^[2] Frying gave figurative uses for torment, and the phrase “to take someone out of the pan and throw him into the fire”, to make a bad situation worse.^[2] Boccaccio has a version of it: noi abbiamo costui tratto della padella e gittatolo nel fuoco (“we have taken him out of the pan and thrown him into the fire”).^[11] The modern proverb is cadere dalla padella nella brace, “to fall from the frying pan into the embers”.^[5][12]

Objects of a similar shape took the name: the bedpan (before 1665, Lippi), a copper bed-warmer (1868), a shallow clay lamp filled with fat, a glassmaker's crucible, and in the theatre a stage floodlight.^[3][5][11] In the slang of Tuscan hunters padella became a missed shot (1879), from which come fare padella “to miss” and the verb spadellare (1934).^[3][4] In northern Italy it also means a grease stain on clothes (1958).^[3][12] English borrowed the word in the 19th century.^[13]

Timeline

• 1262 – Padellaio, a maker of pans, is recorded.^[4]
• 1266 – Medieval Latin padela appears in a document from Piacenza.^[3]
• 1288–1290 – The first Italian record, in a document from Prato.^[2]
• 1302–1305 – Giordano da Pisa uses padella.^[3][5]
• Before 1424 – Giovanni Sercambi uses padellata, a panful.^[3]
• Before 1665 – Lorenzo Lippi uses the word for a bedpan.^[3]
• 1868 – Fanfani records the sense “copper bed-warmer”.^[3]
• 1874 – English padella is recorded, with an earlier record of 1858.^[13]
• 1879 – The hunters' sense “missed shot” appears in the supplement to Tommaseo–Bellini.^[3]
• 1934 – Spadellare “to miss the shot” is recorded.^[4]
• 1958 – The sense “grease stain” is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. frying pan: a round, shallow kitchen pan, usually of metal, with a long handle, used above all for frying: patate saltate in padella.^[5][14][10]
2. bedpan: a flat vessel with a handle used by patients who cannot get out of bed.^[5][14][10]
3. (hunting slang) A missed shot, and by extension a failure: fare padella.^[5][10][11]
4. (historical) A copper bed-warmer with a perforated lid and a long handle, passed between the sheets.^[5][14]
5. A glassmaker's crucible of fireclay.^[5][10]
6. (theatre) A stage floodlight, more often called padellone.^[5][10]
7. (historical) A shallow clay vessel filled with fat and fitted with a wick, used as a lamp.^[5][10]
8. (regional, northern) A grease stain on clothes.^[5][10][12]

Word family

• padellata
• padellaio
• spadellare
• padellare
• padellista
• padellina
• padellino
• padellone

Related words

• patella
• patera
• French poêle
• Spanish paella

Usage notes

The proverb avere un occhio alla gatta e uno alla padella means to keep watch on two things at once.^[11][14] A rarer word padella “kneecap” is recorded from the 16th century and is the same Latin word, as the learned patella.^[8] Padella is also a form of the verb padellare “to miss the target”, formed from the hunters' sense.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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 e f g 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 m De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2717
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
11. ^ 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)
12. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ 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