pescoso

Forms

pescoso (feminine pescosa, masculine plural pescosi, feminine plural pescose)^[1] An older form is Old Italian piscoso, closer to the Latin spelling.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is learned: it is borrowed from Latin piscōsus (“teeming with fish”), an adjective formed in Latin from piscis (“fish”) with the suffix -ōsus.^{[5][3][6][7][1]} Nocentini dates the Italian word to the 16th century, but the TLIO has it in a Florentine text written before 1313.^[6][2] The same Latin adjective is Spanish pescoso.^[8][9]

Latin piscis goes back to Proto-Italic *piski- and Proto-Indo-European *pisk- (“fish”); de Vaan finds the variation in the root vowel between the Italic, Germanic and Celtic words hard to explain.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a Florentine translation of Ovid's Ars amatoria made before 1313, where it describes a stretch of water full of fish that can be fished with profit.^[2] Tommaseo quotes the line E Astifalea ch'è cinta di pescosi guadi (“And Astypalaea, girded by fords full of fish”), rendering Latin piscosis.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The sense has stayed the same since Old Italian: a sea, river or lake rich in fish.^[2][5] In literary Italian it became a stock epithet of the sea;^[5][4] Ariosto has Comacchio set among piscose paludi (marshes full of fish), and Vincenzo Monti's Iliad has il pescoso Oceano.^[5][4] Tommaseo also records an old use for “of fishing”, in Salvini's la pescosa caccia.^[11]

The superlative pescosissimo is recorded,^[5] and Cattaneo wrote that fish were growing scarce in lakes once prodigiosamente pescosi.^[5] The abstract noun is pescosità.^[1]

Timeline

• Before 1313 – A Florentine translation of Ovid's Ars amatoria has the forms pescosi and piscosa.^[2]
• 1519 – Zingarelli's date for the word.^[3]
• Before 1533 – GRADIT's date for the word.^[12]
• Before 1566 – Annibal Caro uses it.^[13]
• 1871 – Pescoso “with dark rings (of the eyes)”, a word of separate origin, is first recorded.^[12][14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a sea, river or lake: teeming with fish, where fishing gives a good catch: un lago poco pescoso.^{[12][15][16][17]}
2. (literary) A standing epithet of the sea.^[5]

Word family

• pescosità

Related words

• pesce
• pesca
• Latin piscis

Usage notes

A separate, rare pescoso, recorded from 1871, describes eyes ringed with dark shadows, as after long weeping; it is formed from pesca in the sense “bruise”, not from pesce.^{[12][14][18][11]}

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
5. ^ a b c d e f g Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
13. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2875
15. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
16. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
17. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
18. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 169