pegola

Forms

pegola f (plural pegole)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian peghola, Old Italian pegolla and Old Italian pegula.^[2] Venetian pégola is recorded in 1214.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin picula, a diminutive of Latin pix (“pitch”), found in Apuleius.^{[4][5][1][3][6]} DEI and Prati see it as a word of northern origin, since pégola is the form of the dialects of upper Italy, where the Tuscan word is pece.^[3][7] The same diminutive gave Occitan pegola, Dalmatian pecla, Friulian peule and Romanian păcură.^[4][8][1][3] Meyer-Lübke explains the Romanian sense “hell” by the double meaning of an Old Church Slavonic word for pitch.^[8]

pix goes back through Proto-Italic *piks to Proto-Indo-European *pik- (“pitch”).^[9][1] Its cognates include Ancient Greek πίσσα (píssa), Lithuanian pìkis and Old Church Slavonic пьцьлъ (pĭcĭlŭ).^[9][1][10] Between vowels the Latin /k/ became /g/, the northern outcome.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the additions to the statutes of Siena made after 1303, with the sense “pitch”.^[2] Dante used it soon after for the boiling pitch of hell: Bollìa là giuso una pegola spessa (“a thick pitch was boiling down there”, Inferno XXI).^[5][11][6]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian pegola was simply a synonym of pece, used in recipes and in accounts of fire thrown at siege engines.^[2][6] Dante's lake of pitch for the barrators made it a literary word, and Carducci still wrote of “lakes of pitch”.^[12][13] In the standard language it is now rare or obsolete.^[5][14]

In the north-east, in Trentino, the Veneto, Venezia Giulia and Friuli, pegola also means bad luck.^[15][13] Cortelazzo and Marcato and DEI explain this as a calque of German Pech, which means both “pitch” and “bad luck”.^[15][3]

Timeline

• 1214 – Venetian pégola is recorded.^[3]
• After 1303 – First Italian record, in the additions to the Sienese statutes.^[2]
• Before 1313 – Dante's Inferno has the boiling pegola.^[5][12]
• 14th century – Impegolare “to smear with pitch” is recorded.^[4]
• 1813 – Stratico records pegoliera, the shed where pitch is worked.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic, literary) Pitch (pece), especially in liquid form.^[5][12][11]
2. (figurative, northern regional) Bad luck, a jinx: che pegola!^[12][11][13]

Word family

• impegolare
• pegoliera

Related words

• pece
• Latin pix
• German Pech

Usage notes

The sense “bad luck” is used above all in the eastern Veneto.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2822
4. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
7. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 757
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ 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)
14. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET