pappare

Forms

pappare (first-person singular present pàppo, first-person singular past historic pappài, past participle pappàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] The dialect form Venetian papare belongs to the Venetian area.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pappāre (“to eat”), a nursery word.^[3][1][4] Nocentini, Devoto–Oli and Sabatini–Coletti derive the Latin verb from pappa (“food, pap”), Treccani calls both onomatopoeic, and DEI sees it as a variant of papāre, found in Plautus.^{[3][5][6][7][8]} The Latin Wiktionary calls its origin unclear: perhaps an imitative nursery word, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to feed”), the root of pāscō.^[1]

The verb is pan-Romance: Old French paper, Occitan papar, Catalan papar, Spanish papar, Portuguese papar, Sardinian pappare “to eat” and Romanian păpa.^[3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Fazio degli Uberti's Dittamondo (about 1345–1367), with the neutral sense “to eat”: L'uom non dé pur dire i' pappo e vivo / come nel prato fan le pecorelle (“Man should not only say: I eat and live, as the sheep do in the meadow”).^[10][2][4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb already had an expressive, negative colour, and the TLIO records the figurative sense “to grab other people's goods, steal”.^[10] The Pataffio has pappa, diluvia of a glutton.^[11][12] DELI dates the sense “to make illicit profit, take for oneself what belongs to others too” to 1559.^[4] Tommaseo cites Davanzati's Tacitus, where Vitellius had sold himself as a slave al pappare e scialacquare “to guzzling and squandering”.^[12]

A family of colloquial words grew around the verb: pappatore (1427), pappata “a big meal” (16th century), pappone “glutton” (17th century), pappatoria “eating a lot” (18th century) and the compound pappagorgia, the double chin.^{[3][4][8][11]} Pappa tu che pappo io describes a dishonest administration in which everyone grabs what they can.^[7]

Timeline

• 1345–1367 – Fazio degli Uberti uses pappo in the Dittamondo.^[10]
• 1427 – Pappatore is recorded.^[3]
• 1559 – B. Cavalcanti uses the verb for illicit gain.^[4]
• 16th century – Pappata is recorded.^[3]
• 17th century – Pappone and pappagorgia are recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (colloquial) To eat greedily and in large amounts, to gobble up; often with si: Si è pappato mezza pizza in un minuto.^{[13][5][6][1]}
2. (colloquial, intransitive) To eat: Venite, si pappa!^[13][5][7]
3. (figurative) To pocket money or goods dishonestly, to embezzle: Si sono pappati i fondi della cooperativa.^[13][5][6]

Word family

• pappata
• pappatore
• pappatoria
• pappone
• pappagorgia
• pappacchione
• pappataci

Related words

• pappa
• pappardella
• Latin pappo

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 12, 524
3. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e 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 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 c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2758
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
11. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
12. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET