pavimento

Forms

pavimento m (plural pavimenti)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pavīmentum (“beaten earth floor; pavement”), a learned word.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin noun is formed on paviō (“to beat, to ram”) with the suffix -mentum.^[6][1][2] The inherited outcomes of the Latin word are Old Italian palmiento, now palmento “press-room, millstone”, and Romanian pământ (“earth”).^[3][1][7] Elsewhere it gave Old French pavement, Spanish pavimiento and Catalan paviment.^[3][7] From French comes English pavement.^[5]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *pawje/o- and Proto-Indo-European *ph₂u-ie/o- (“to hit”) for the Latin verb, and compares Ancient Greek παίω (paíō, “to strike”) and Lithuanian pjáuti (“to cut”).^[8] Nocentini also compares Latin paveō (“to tremble with fear”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Roman Miracole de Roma, from the middle of the 13th century, for a paved surface of a building or a street.^[9] DELI's first record is Dante, before 1321: “Mostrava ancor lo duro pavimento” (“the hard pavement showed also”), of the carved floor in Purgatorio XII.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the word for the paved floor of a building or a street, and by extension for the storey of a building.^[9] The commentator Francesco da Buti glossed it as a learned word meaning “paved”.^[11][12] Renaissance writers distinguished floors of terrazzo, brick and stone, and Palladio describes the Venetian terrazzo floor of crushed tile and fine gravel.^[11]

At the end of the 19th century purists such as Arlìa (1884) wanted the word kept for rooms, and condemned pavimentare and pavimentazione for streets as Gallicisms; streets were to be lastricate or selciate.^[2] Technical senses followed in anatomy, for the floor of the mouth or the pelvis, and in geography, for the deep ocean floor.^[4][13][14]

Timeline

• Mid-13th century – Pavimento appears in the Miracole de Roma.^[9]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses it in the Purgatorio.^[2]
• 1556 – Daniele Barbaro uses pavimentare.^[2]
• 1866 – Carducci uses pavimentazione.^[2]
• 1884 – Arlìa condemns pavimentare for streets.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The floor of a room or indoor space, usually covered with tiles, marble or wood: Abbiamo rifatto il pavimento del bagno.^[4][13][14]
2. The floor of a vehicle.^[4][14]
3. (anatomy) The lower wall or layer of some organs: il pavimento della bocca, il pavimento pelvico.^[4][13][15]
4. (geography) Pavimento abissale: the deep ocean floor.^[13][14][16]

Word family

• pavimentare
• pavimentazione
• pavimentatore
• pavimentale

Related words

• palmento
• pavé
• Latin pavimentum
• English pavement

Usage notes

The TLIO records a rare Old Italian pavimento meaning “fear”, from paveō, in Francesco da Buti (1385–1395).^[9] A pavimento galleggiante is a raised floor of removable panels with cables underneath.^[16][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2810
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. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 12, 875
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
16. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli