pietroso

Forms

pietroso (feminine pietrosa, masculine plural pietrosi, feminine plural pietrose)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin petrōsus (“full of rocks, rocky”), reshaped after pietra.^[2][3][4][5] Treccani takes it as the older Italian petroso given the /je/ of the noun, and Devoto as a blend of the adjective and the noun.^[5][6] Devoto–Oli and Wiktionary derive it, or allow it to be derived, from the noun with the suffix -oso within Italian.^[7][1] Wiktionary calls the two adjectives doublets.^[1]

petrōsus is petra (“rock, stone”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is recorded from 1282, in the second half of the 13th century.^[3][2][9] DELI's early records are in the form petroso: “made of or like stone” before 1347 in Bartolomeo da San Concordio, and “full of stones” in the Italian translation of Crescenzi.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Old texts used the word of stony ground: the Italian Crescenzi says that big trees do not grow where the earth is troppo pietrosa, and the Gospel's seed falls in luogo pietroso.^[11] Water that springs from or runs over stones was once pietrosa too, a sense now obsolete.^[11][3] Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata has Scio pietrosa, rocky Chios.^[11]

The figurative sense, hard as stone and unfeeling, belongs to literary use.^[3][4][12] Treccani notes that pietroso is the usual form in the general senses, while petroso is felt as literary and survives in some terms of anatomy and zoology.^[5] In botany cellula pietrosa is a sclereid.^[5][2]

Timeline

• 1282 – First record.^[3]
• Before 1347 – Bartolomeo da San Concordio uses petroso “of stone”.^[10]
• 14th century – The Italian Crescenzi has petroso “full of stones”.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Covered with stones, stony (sassoso); by extension, arid: un sentiero pietroso.^[2][4][3]
2. Made of stone or cut into rock: una grotta pietrosa.^[2][5]
3. Hard or stony in texture or look: una crosta pietrosa.^[2][4]
4. (figurative, literary) Hard, harsh, unfeeling; also stubborn.^[2][3][12]

Word family

• pietrosità

Related words

• pietra
• petroso
• Latin petrōsus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
3. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
6. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b c Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli