palmento

Forms

palmento m (plural palmenti)^[1] Older forms include Old Italian balmento and Old Italian palmentu.^[2] The GDLI also gives the old forms Old Italian palamento and Old Italian patimento and an old plural palmenta.^[3]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[4][5][6][7] It is probably inherited from Vulgar Latin *paumentum, a form of Latin pavīmentum (“floor, pavement”), meaning the floor of the room where grapes were trodden or grain was ground.^{[4][8][5][9][2]} Nocentini explains the ⟨l⟩ by a reverse change of ⟨au⟩ to ⟨al⟩, as in calma.^[8] Medieval Latin palmentum is recorded in Tuscany from 789, at Cava from 844, at Amalfi from 964 and at Jesi from 1233, with the derivative palmentaticum, a duty for the use of the press, at Naples in 921.^[10]

The floor sense survives in Sercambi's novellas and as Old Italian palmiento in the Vita di Cola, a text in Roman dialect.^[4][10][11] Outcomes of the same Latin word are Sardinian pamentu “floor” in Logudorese and Romanian pământ “earth, world”, and Romance relatives of the Italian word are Neapolitan parmiento “bed of grape marc”, Corsican palmentu “wine press” and Sicilian parmentu.^{[12][10][11][1]} Nocentini argues that only the Latin word for “floor” accounts for all the senses of the word, including “drinking trough”, starting from “paved place”.^[8]

Two other explanations have been proposed.^[4][8] Campus derived it from Late Latin pagmentum (“joint, framework”), from pangō (“to fasten, fix”).^[11][10] Prati prefers this, and Körting cites it after Flechia.^[11][13][10] Meyer-Lübke objected that it fits “mill” but hardly “place where wine is pressed”.^[12] Pisani (1978) proposed *palamentum, a mill with paddles and its machinery, from pala.^[4][8] Nocentini replies that neither form has descendants in the vocabulary of crafts.^[8] DEI notes that the sense “millstone” first appears at Bologna in 1288, so the meaning did not develop from “millstone” to “press”.^[10]

The Latin word is formed from paviō (“to beat, ram down”) with the suffix -mentum.^[14][1] De Vaan traces the verb to a PIE present Proto-Indo-European *ph₂u-ie/o- (“to hit”), with Ancient Greek παίω (paíō, “to strike”) as a cognate.^[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first Italian record is in Andrea da Grosseto (1268, Tuscan), and the TLIO's main early sense is a room holding the vats for treading grapes or the millstones for grain, or the vat itself.^[2][6] DELI's first record is Rustico di Filippo, before 1300, whose sonnet speaks of millstones so heavy that lo palmento would sink to the bottom.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the word both for the wine press and for the mill.^[2][10] The Italian versions of Gregory's Dialogues and of the Bible use it for the place where grapes are pressed, the latter for Latin de turcularibus.^[16] Matteo Villani tells of two houses built across a canal, catuna con sei palmenta (“each with six palmenta”), where the word means a set of millstones.^[3][16] The TLIO also records the senses “floor” and the place where the priors of the elders sat and spoke.^[2]

Later the mill sense covered the building with the millstones and, in 19th-century Tuscany, the bin into which the flour falls;^[10][11] Giusti uses it for a drinking trough.^[10][11] In the south the word kept the sense of a wide, shallow vat of brick, concrete or rock for treading grapes and fermenting the must, still found in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily.^[17][3]

The millstone was compared to the jaws, and palmento became a humorous literary word for “jaw”, used by Gadda.^[8][3][5] This explains mangiare a quattro palmenti, “to eat greedily”, which Nocentini compares with mangiare a quattro ganasce.^[8] Lippi has scuffiare a due palmenti, “to eat a lot; to earn twice over”.^[11] The phrase is also used of illicit gains from several sources, especially by holders of public office.^[17][6] From this comes the figurative sense “profiteer”.^[5]

Timeline

• 789 – Medieval Latin palmentum is recorded in Tuscany.^[10]
• 844 – Palmentum appears in a document of Cava.^[10][11]
• 921 – Palmentaticum, a pressing duty, is recorded at Naples.^[10]
• 1268 – Andrea da Grosseto uses Italian palmento.^[2][6]
• 1288 – The sense “millstone” first appears at Bologna.^[10]
• Before 1300 – Rustico di Filippo uses it of a mill.^[4][3]
• 19th century – Giusti uses it for a drinking trough.^[10][11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A wide, shallow vat of brick, concrete or rock, used in southern Italy for treading grapes and fermenting the must.^[5][9][18]
2. Each of the millstones of a watermill: macinare a due palmenti.^[5][9][6]
3. By extension, the room or building that houses the millstones and other milling equipment.^[5][18][6]
4. (literary, humorous) The jaw.^[5][3]
5. (figurative) A profiteer, someone who gets rich dishonestly.^[5][1]

Related words

• pavimento
• Latin pavimentum

Usage notes

Mangiare a quattro palmenti (in literary use also a due palmenti) is a set phrase meaning “to eat greedily”, and figuratively “to make large or dishonest profits”.^[5][6][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2734
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 729
12. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
13. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
14. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
16. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
17. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
18. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse