Etymologically
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piscina

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Pronunciation

  • /piʃˈʃi.na/[1]

Forms

piscina f (plural piscine)[1] Old forms include pescina (Boccaccio), pascina, pessina and pisina.[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin piscīna (“fishpond”), from piscis (“fish”).[4][5][6] The Latin noun is formed with the suffix -īna and meant a fishpond or tank, then also a bathing pool (Seneca, 1st century).[7][1][2] DEI considers this form certainly learned.[2]

The word also lived on in popular use, in pescina and in the Tuscan place names Pescina and Pescinale, recorded from the 11th century.[2][8] Its dialect outcomes are Venetian pisina (“puddle, mud”), Logudorese Sardinian piskina and Spanish pecina (“mud”).[9][2] The same Latin word gave French piscine, recorded as pecine from about 1200.[2][3][5]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *piski- and Proto-Indo-European *pisk- (“fish”), the source also of Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (fisks) and Old Irish íasc.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is from Siena in 1298, where the word names a wash-house; in the sermons of Giordano da Pisa, 1305–1306, it is a tank of water for bathing.[4] DEI and Prati find it in the Italian translation of Albertano da Brescia, of the 13th century, where the speaker has made piscine d'acqua, water tanks to irrigate his woods.[2][8][11]

Semantic evolution

In the 14th century the word also named a vat for soaking leather and a watering trough for animals.[2] A 16th-century writer explained that piscine were at first places for keeping fish, and that the name later passed to every place where people could swim and bathe.[11] The piscina probatica of the Gospels, the pool near the Temple of Jerusalem where the sacrificial animals were washed, comes from Late Latin, after a Greek name meaning “sheep pool”.[2][12]

The modern swimming pool and the building around it are the main senses today.[6][13] A piscina olimpionica is 50 metres long with eight lanes.[14][15] In nuclear engineering the word names the pool in which a reactor core is placed.[6] Greek borrowed the word as Modern Greek πισίνα (pisína).[1]

Timeline

  • 11th century – Tuscan place names Pescina are recorded.[8]
  • 13th century – The translation of Albertano da Brescia uses piscina.[2]
  • 1298 – A Sienese record uses the word for a wash-house.[4]
  • 1305–1306 – Giordano da Pisa uses it for a bathing tank.[4]
  • 14th century – Boccaccio has the popular form pescina.[2]
  • 14th century – Piscina probatica is recorded in Fazio degli Uberti.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A swimming pool: D'estate i bambini passano i pomeriggi in piscina.[6][14][13]
  2. The building with a pool and its changing rooms and showers: La piscina comunale chiude alle nove.[6][13][16]
  3. (historical) A tank of water used as a reservoir, wash-house, fishpond or watering trough.[6][14][13]
  4. (nuclear engineering) A large pool in which the core of a reactor is placed.[6]

Word family

  • piscinetta

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2950
  3. ^ 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, 562
  4. ^ a b c d 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 f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 783
  9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  12. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
  13. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  14. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  15. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  16. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana