pipita

Forms

pipita f (plural pipite)^[1] Old forms include pippita, pippitta and pivida.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin pipita, a form recorded in Late Latin glosses, with a Vulgar Latin variant *pippita, beside classical Latin pītuīta (“resin, gum; mucus, phlegm; pip”), which gave the learned pituita.^{[4][3][5][1][6]} DELI explains the name by the stringy look of the film on the bird's tongue.^[3][7]

The same word is French pépie, Old Occitan pepida, Catalan pebida, Spanish pepita and Portuguese pevide, with Sardinian pibida and Friulian pivide, and dialect forms such as Lombard pevida (Milan) and Emilian puidla (Bologna).^[4][8][6] It is found in the Italian and western Romance area only.^[6] Through Low German it passed into German Pips, and DEI derives the English word pip from it through Middle Dutch pippe.^[4][6]

According to Nocentini, The Latin word first meant “resin” and is related to pīnus (“pine”) through a stem also seen in Ancient Greek πίτυς (pítus, “pine”); de Vaan, after weighing that and other proposals, calls its origin unknown.^[4][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT dates the word before 1320.^[11] The Italian translations of Palladius and of Pietro de' Crescenzi (about 1350) describe it as a white film that wraps the tip of a hen's tongue.^[2][3][12]

Semantic evolution

The sense “hangnail”, the strip of skin that lifts at the edge of a fingernail, is recorded first as pivida in 1474 in Guglielmo da Piacenza's surgery and as pipita before 1588 in Raffaello Borghini.^[3] Prati explains it from the membrane that was pulled off the hen's tongue.^[3] Soderini, in the 16th century, used the word for the tender tip of a shoot, a sense Pascoli and Pirandello later took up.^[6][5][13]

The disease gave jocular phrases: avere la pipita is said of someone always thirsty or strangely silent, and ti venisse la pipita! is a curse on a chatterbox.^[11][5][7] Tommaseo records the proverbial fare d'una pipita un fistolo, to make a great ill of a small one.^[12] From Spanish pepita “seed”, Italian took pepita “nugget” in 1817.^[4]

Timeline

• Before 1320 – GRADIT's date of first record.^[11]
• About 1350 – The Crescenzi translation names the poultry disease.^[3]
• 1474 – Pivida “hangnail” appears in Guglielmo da Piacenza.^[3]
• 16th century – Soderini uses the word for the tip of a shoot.^[6]
• Before 1588 – Raffaello Borghini writes pipita for a hangnail.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (veterinary) pip: an infectious disease of birds, especially poultry, in which a white horny film forms on the back of the tongue and hinders swallowing.^[11][5][13]
2. (colloquial) A hangnail, a strip of skin lifting at the edge of a fingernail.^[11][5][14]
3. (uncommon) The tender tip of a shoot or leaf bud.^[11][5][14]

Related words

• pituita
• pepita
• Latin pītuīta

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 538
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2939
7. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse