petecchia

Forms

petecchia f (plural petecchie)^[1] Older spellings include petechia, pettecchia and pettechia.^[2] In Sicily and Calabria the word is piticchia and peticchia.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is probably inherited from Vulgar Latin *(im)petĭcula, a diminutive of Latin impetīgo (“scaly skin eruption”) in spoken Latin, with the first syllable lost, as DELI, Nocentini and GRADIT have it.^[4][5][6] Devoto and Devoto–Oli start from Late Latin impetix, the Late Latin form.^[7][8] Wiktionary also starts from petīgō, the shorter form of the same word, through a Vulgar Latin *peticla.^[1] Sabatini–Coletti, Treccani and GDLI call the origin uncertain, and Etymonline unknown.^{[9][3][2][10]}

Wiktionary and Wikizionario also mention a Vulgar Latin *pesticula from Latin pestis (“plague”), since the spots are often a sign of that disease, and, as less likely, Ancient Greek πιττάκιον (pittákion).^[1][11] impetīgo is impetō (“to attack”) with the suffix -īgō.^[1]

Italian lent the word to French and Spanish: French pétéchie, Spanish petequia.^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is the Venetian diarist Girolamo Priuli, before 1512, for small point-like bleeding under the skin; he tells of a sharp fever in Venice with spots on the body, an illness that “was then called petechie”.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The word was used mostly in the plural, both for the spots and for the fever they marked, and it is common in accounts of epidemics from the 16th to the 19th century.^[2] Petecchiale, describing a disease marked by petechiae, is recorded before 1714 in Ramazzini.^[4]

In the 18th century, according to DEI, petecchia was also used for a miser, and GRADIT and Treccani still give this figurative sense as rare.^[12][6][3] In Pisa and Carrara it is the thin skin under the shell of a chestnut, and in Sicily a disease of citrus fruit, which marks the rind of lemons with brown spots.^[12][3] Mal delle petecchie was a name of pébrine, a disease of silkworms.^[9][3]

French has pétéchie from 1741, after an isolated pétèche of 1564.^[13] English used the Italian word from the 1580s and the Modern Latin petechia from about 1795.^[10]

Timeline

• Before 1512 – Girolamo Priuli records petechie in Venice.^[4][2]
• 1564 – An isolated French pétèche is recorded.^[13]
• 1580s – The Italian word appears in English texts.^[10]
• Before 1714 – Ramazzini uses petecchiale.^[4]
• 1741 – French pétéchie is recorded.^[13]
• 1877 – Sicilian piticchia for the citrus disease is recorded.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (medicine) petechia, a tiny pinpoint haemorrhage in the skin, seen in some bleeding and infectious diseases such as typhus.^[6][8][14]
2. (botany) A disorder of lemons that marks the rind with sunken brown spots.^[6][8][3]
3. (veterinary) mal delle petecchie, pébrine, a disease of silkworms.^[9][3]
4. (figurative, rare) A miser, a stingy person.^[6][14][8]

Word family

• petecchiale
• petecchioso

Related words

• impetigine
• Latin impetīgo
• petechia

Usage notes

The word is mostly used in the plural, petecchie.^[2][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org
12. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2879
13. ^ a b c d Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli