pica

Forms

pica f (plural piche)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pīca (“magpie”), a learned word according to DELI.^[2][3][4] The Latin word lives on in French pie (the source of English pie), Occitan piga and Sardinian piga, and was borrowed as Basque mika.^[5][6][7] Dialect “pica” “magpie” is found in the Marche, Lazio and southern Italy.^[7]

DELI calls the Latin word of uncertain origin.^[2] Its nearest match is Umbrian peica, but Nocentini puts the weight on its pairing with pīcus (“woodpecker”), the source of picchio: the two birds belonged together in augury, and it is the woodpecker's name that is motivated, by a root meaning “to prick, peck”.^[5] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *peikā and explains it as a derivative of a word for “woodpecker”, perhaps onomatopoeic.^[8] Wiktionary sets up Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- (“woodpecker; magpie”), with German Specht (“woodpecker”) as a cognate.^[1]

The medical sense “pica” is named after the bird: DELI says that the sufferer, like the magpie, tries substances that are not food, and the GDLI points to the magpie's habit of taking all sorts of objects.^[2][9] DEI treats the medical term as a learned word through French (16th century) and English (1563), with the Latin name as a calque of Ancient Greek κίσσα (kíssa, “craving of pregnant women”), a word distinct from the Greek name of the magpie.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Dante's Purgatorio (1313–1319), where the Piche misere are the daughters of Pierus, turned into magpies for challenging the Muses: Seguitando il mio canto con quel suono / di cui le Piche misere sentiro / lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono (“accompanying my song with that sound whose blow the wretched Magpies felt so that they despaired of pardon”).^[3][10][11]

Semantic evolution

Landino explained that Latin pica meant both the jay and the magpie, and Renaissance poets used the word for the greedy, chattering bird (l'ingorda pica, Alamanni).^[9][10] In some regions it names the jay, and also the roller, the razorbill and the puffin; in zoology Pica is the genus of the magpies.^[3][12][10] At Castel Madama near Rome pica is the jay, and at Naples the magpie.^[13]

Varchi, in the 16th century, wrote that the Greeks and the Latins named the strange appetite for unnatural foods after the magpie.^[9] The medical term is recorded in the 18th century (Taglini) and gave picacismo in 1829.^[7][2] The GDLI also records a veterinary sense.^[9]

Timeline

• 1313–1319 – Dante's Purgatorio has the first record of pica.^[3]
• 1563 – The medical pica is recorded in English.^[7]
• 1749 – The medical term appears in Chambers.^[7]
• 1829 – Fantonetti uses picacismo.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) Magpie, the bird.^{[3][4][14][10][1]}
2. (regional) The jay, and also the roller, the razorbill and the puffin.^[3][12][10]
3. (zoology) With a capital, the genus of the crow family to which the magpie belongs.^[3][12][10]
4. (medicine) pica, picacismo: a craving to eat things that are not food.^{[3][4][14][1]}

Word family

• picacismo

Related words

• picchio
• gazza
• Latin pīca
• Latin pīcus

Usage notes

GRADIT lists two minor homographs.^[3] Pica (feminine, invariable), recorded from 1958, is the typographic measure of English-speaking countries, about a sixth of an inch; it comes from English pica (1497), named after a medieval English liturgical book called pica in Medieval Latin.^[3][10] Zingarelli thinks the book's name is probably Latin pīca “magpie”, and Sabatini–Coletti dates the Italian word to 1886.^[14][12] Pica (masculine, invariable) is also the pika, a mammal of the genus Ochotona, from English pika (1827) and ultimately a Tungusic word.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2899
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
10. ^ 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)
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
14. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli