palmo

Forms

palmo m (plural palmi)^[1] Early forms include Old Italian parmo, Old Italian pallmo and Old Italian palmu.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin palmus (“a palm's breadth, span”), a word formed from palma (“palm of the hand”).^{[4][5][6][1][7]} The Latin noun is recorded from Cato.^[7] The same word gave Occitan palm, Catalan palm, Spanish palmo and Portuguese palmo, all for the span, and Old French paume and Sardinian prammu had the same sense; in Lombard and in Romansh it means the palm of the hand.^[5][8]

De Vaan traces the Latin word for the palm to Proto-Italic *palamā- and a stem Proto-Indo-European *plh₂-em-h₂- (“flat, wide”), with cognates in Ancient Greek παλάμη (palámē, “palm of the hand”), Old English folm (“flat hand”) and Old High German folma (“hand”).^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a Venetian document of 1281–1284, where the word is a measure of length based on the hand, either its breadth or the span from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger.^[2] Dante describes a giant: I' ne vedea trenta gran palmi / dal loco in giù dov'omo affibbia 'l manto (“I saw thirty great spans of him downward from where a man clasps his cloak”).^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

As a unit the palmo varied from place to place, about 25 cm on average: 22.2 cm at Cagliari, 22.3 at Rome, 24.8 at Genoa and in Sardinia, 25.8 in Sicily.^[3] Pegolotti gives a measuring rod for linen in spans, and Landino reckoned three spans to the arm's length (braccio).^[3] It went out with the metric system but is still used to measure fishing nets.^[9][10]

The word also stands for a very small extent (un palmo di terra) or, the other way round, an unusually long one (un palmo di lingua fuori, with one's tongue hanging out).^[6][10] The phrase restare con un palmo di naso, to be left disappointed, goes with Cecchi's rimanere con tanto di naso (1585); Tommaseo explained it by a gesture of the hands showing the length of the nose.^[4] In Tuscany palmo is also the palm of the hand: “the people of Florence say palmo and not palma”, Tommaseo noted, and portare in palmo di mano means to hold someone in high esteem.^[4][11][12]

Italian palmo passed into English as a measure about 1635, and German used Palma in the same sense in 1865.^[13]

Timeline

• 1281–1284 – A Venetian document uses palmo as a measure.^[2]
• Before 1313 – The first record as Nocentini and GRADIT date it.^[5][6]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses palmi for the old measure.^[4]
• 1585 – G. M. Cecchi writes rimanere con tanto di naso.^[4]
• About 1635 – English palmo is recorded as a measure.^[13]
• 1809 – Foscolo uses the word for the span of the open hand.^[4]
• 1831 – The sense “palm of the hand” is recorded.^[4]
• 1865 – German Palma is recorded as a measure.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A span: the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger of the open hand, used as a rough measure: Il muro era alto un palmo più di lui.^[6][9][12]
2. (historical) An old unit of length, about 25 cm, used before the metric system.^[6][9][14]
3. (hyperbolic) A very small extent: Non ha ceduto un palmo di terreno.^[6][14][15]
4. (hyperbolic) An unusually long extent of something normally short: Si era lasciato crescere una barba lunga un palmo.^[6][15]
5. (Tuscany) The palm of the hand.^[6][12][16]

Related words

• palma
• spanna
• Latin palmus

Usage notes

Common phrases are palmo a palmo or a palmo a palmo (little by little; in every detail), restare or rimanere con un palmo di naso (to be left disappointed), non vedere a un palmo dal naso and portare in palmo di mano.^[6][12][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ 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, 431
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ 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 c Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
16. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana