pezza

Forms

pezza f (plural pezze)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian peça, Old Italian pecia, Old Italian peza and Old Italian pessa.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pettia, a word of Celtic origin.^[4][5][6] In Medieval Latin it appears as petia, mostly meaning “piece of land”;^[7][8][9] Nocentini and Devoto derive it from Gaulish *pettia (“piece”), which Welsh peth (“thing”) and Breton pez (“piece”) confirm.^[7][8][9] Wiktionary notes the Late Latin pettia from the Lex Salica onward, calls its origin uncertain, and gives Proto-Celtic *kʷezdis (“piece, portion”) as the possible Celtic source.^[1] Beside it Italian has the masculine pezzo, from *pettium.^[1][10]

The word is pan-Romance: French pièce, Occitan pesa, Catalan pesa, Spanish pieza, Portuguese peça, Sardinian petta (“meat”) and dialectal Romanian pâță (“meat”).^[7][10] The Sardinian and Romanian outcomes keep the sense “piece of meat”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Venetian document of the second half of the 12th century, and the word is found in the sense “fragment, piece of something”.^[2][7] DELI's first dates are Venetian pecia “plot of farmland” (1253), a bolt of cloth in a will of 1263, and a piece of cloth in Bono Giamboni (before 1292).^[4]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used pezza for a fragment of anything, a unit of goods in trade, a slice of meat or fish, a plot of land, swaddling cloth, a fine cloth hung for decoration, a patch sewn on a garment, and a stretch of time (una buona pezza).^[2] The sense of a span of space or time is in Francesco da Barberino (1314); Massimo d'Azeglio is said to have thrown away a letter that began È buona pezza che io desiderava scriverle (“It has been a good while that I wished to write to you”) as the work of a pedant.^[4] Giovanni Villani used it for a part of a heraldic shield.^[4]

Pezza was also the name of coins: a coin for the Levant minted for Ferdinando de' Medici in 1665, and a Neapolitan coin.^[9][11] Pezza d'appoggio, a document that supports an expense or a claim, is a calque of French pièce à l'appui.^[4][12] In recent slang a pezza is a crush, and also a drunken or drugged high.^[13]

Timeline

• Second half of the 12th century – A Venetian document has the first record.^[2][7]
• 1253 – Venetian pecia means a plot of farmland.^[4]
• 1263 – A will uses it for a bolt of cloth.^[4][5]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses it for a piece of cloth.^[4]
• 1314 – Francesco da Barberino uses it for a stretch of space or time.^[4]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani uses it in heraldry.^[4]
• 1665 – A pezza coin is minted for Ferdinando de' Medici.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece of cloth used for various purposes; a rag: Asciuga il tavolo con una pezza pulita.^[5][12][14]
2. Cloth used to make dolls and soft toys: bambola di pezza.^[5][14]
3. A patch sewn over a tear or hole;^[5][14][12] (figurative) a makeshift remedy: mettere una pezza.^[5][14][12]
4. A bolt of cloth, as it comes from the mill to the shop.^[5][15][16]
5. A patch of colour, especially on an animal's coat.^[5][15]
6. (dated) A cloth nappy, or a cloth used during menstruation.^[5][12]
7. A plot of farmland;^[5][14] (historical) a land measure used in Lazio.^[5][14]
8. (regional) A piece of butchered meat; a cut of beef from the upper thigh; a whole cheese.^[5]
9. (bureaucracy) A document: pezza d'appoggio.^[14][15]
10. (heraldry) An ordinary: pezze onorevoli.^[14][1]
11. (literary) A while: da lunga pezza, for a long time.^[14][6]
12. (numismatics, historical) A name of various coins struck from the 16th century on.^[15][11]

Word family

• pezzo
• pezzetta
• pezzuola
• pezzato
• pezzatura
• rappezzare
• rappezzo
• appezzamento
• spezzare

Related words

• French pièce
• Spanish pieza

Usage notes

Pezza da piedi, the foot cloth soldiers once wore in place of socks, is used figuratively of a person of no account: trattare qualcuno come una pezza da piedi.^[14][16][6] Avere le pezze al culo (vulgar) means to be penniless.^[12][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 225
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 g h i j k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
7. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2888
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana