penna

Forms

penna f (plural penne)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian pena and, in the north and south, Old Italian pinna.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pinna (“feather; wing”), merged with its near twin penna (“wing; feather”).^[4][5][6][7] GRADIT and Gabrielli give the first of these as the base, influenced by the second; the two are constantly confused in Latin manuscripts, and the confusion carried over into the Romance languages.^{[8][9][3][10]}

The word is French penne, Occitan pena, Sardinian pinna and Romanian pană.^[5][11] In Ibero-Romance it took the sense “peak, rock”: Catalan penya, Spanish peña, Portuguese penha.^[5][12] In French, Occitan and Catalan this descendant was largely displaced by that of Latin plūma.^[11] Battisti and Alessio see the sense “pen” in French plume, Spanish pluma and German Feder as calques.^[10]

The Latin word for “wing” goes back to Proto-Italic *petnā, from the root Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (“to fly”);^[13][14][1] the word for “feather” is probably a dialect variant of it.^[13][14][1] The same root gave petō (“to make for, seek”).^[4][5] Cognates include Hittite pattar (“wing”), Ancient Greek πτερόν (pterón, “wing”), Old High German fedara (“feather”) and English feather.^[13][5][14] The old form pesna cited by Festus is explained by Nocentini as ⟨*pet-snā⟩, but de Vaan assigns the forms in ⟨-sn-⟩ to pēnis and derives the word from ⟨*petn-⟩.^[5][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Libro of Uguccione da Lodi, from Cremona, early in the 13th century, with the sense “bird's feather”;^[2][4] DELI gives Maestro Francesco, also early 13th century.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The sense “quill pen” appears at the end of the 13th century in the Novellino; it gave rise to the figurative use for writing and for a writer: una buona penna is a good writer.^[4][2][6] In Old Italian the plural also meant wings, as in Dante's sotto l'ombra delle sacre penne for the Roman eagle, and set phrases used the feather for something of little worth.^[2][15] The word also named the fletched end of an arrow (before 1452) and the narrow peen of a hammer, opposite its face (before 1537, Vannoccio Biringuccio).^[4]

Later senses include the feather on the Alpine troops' hat (before 1908, Edmondo De Amicis), whence penne nere for the Alpini, and, in the plural, the short tube-shaped pasta (1875).^[4][16] English borrowed penne in 1919.^[17] The ballpoint pen, penna a sfera, is probably a translation of English ball-point pen.^[4]

In central Italy penna also means a rock or peak, a sense common in place names.^[18][10]

Timeline

• Early 13th century – Uguccione da Lodi and Maestro Francesco use penna for a bird's feather.^[2][4]
• Late 13th century – The Novellino uses it for a quill pen.^[4]
• 1280–1298 – Pennaiolo, a seller of pens, is recorded.^[4]
• Before 1452 – Giovanni Cavalcanti uses it for the feathered end of an arrow.^[4]
• Before 1537 – Vannoccio Biringuccio uses it for the peen of a hammer.^[4]
• 1875 – The plural penne is recorded for a kind of pasta.^[4][17]
• Before 1908 – Edmondo De Amicis uses it for the feather on the Alpine hat.^[4]
• 1919 – English penne is first recorded.^[17]
• 1969 – Pennarello, the felt-tip pen, is recorded as a trade name.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A feather, one of the horny structures that cover a bird's body and serve for flight.^[8][15][16]
2. (literary, in the plural) Wings.^[8][15][19]
3. A feather worn as an ornament on a hat, especially that of the Alpini: le penne nere, the Alpini.^[15][16][9]
4. A pen: once a sharpened goose quill, now any instrument for writing in ink: penna stilografica, penna a sfera.^[8][16][19]
5. (figurative) A writer, or a way of writing.^[6]
6. The feathered end of an arrow, opposite the point.^[9][4]
7. The peen of a hammer, the part opposite the face.^[4][19]
8. (in the plural) penne, short tube-shaped pasta.^[4][16][1]
9. (archaic) A porcupine's quill; a fish's fin.^[8][15]

Word family

• pennuto
• pennato
• pennone
• pennino
• pennaiolo
• pennarello
• pennivendolo
• penninervio
• pennatula
• pennola
• depennare
• impennare
• spennare
• pennacchio

Related words

• pinna
• Latin penna

Usage notes

Lasciarci or rimetterci le penne means to come off very badly, or to lose one's life.^[15][16][19] A cane da penna is a gun dog trained for birds.^[16][19] Battisti and Alessio list a separate penna “summit” in Old Italian, which Cortelazzo and Marcato derive from the same Latin word.^[10][18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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 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 h i j k l m n o p q r s 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
9. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
10. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2834
11. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
13. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
16. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
17. ^ a b c Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
18. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET, p. 378
19. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana