poggio

Forms

poggio m (plural poggi)^[1] Old Italian forms include pogio, Old Italian poghio and the southern Old Italian poiu, and an old plural le poggia.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin podium (“raised platform, base”), which took the geographical sense “hill” in the Middle Ages.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} The learned borrowing of the same word is podio.^[4][1] DELI also notes the spoken Latin diminutive Vulgar Latin *podiolum, the source of poggiolo.^[4]

The hill sense is found in Italy, France, Occitania, Catalonia and Aragon, as French puy, Occitan puei and Catalan puig, also often in place names; Spanish poyo and Portuguese poio keep the older sense of a stone bench beside the house.^[5][9][8]

The Latin word is from Ancient Greek πόδιον (pódion, “base”), a diminutive of πούς (poús, “foot”).^{[1][10][11][12]}

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Sienese document of 1235.^[2] Medieval Latin at Bologna in 1250 already glosses podium as “height of ground”, and a Florentine place name a le Pogiora is recorded in 1273 or 1274.^[4] Sabatini–Coletti date the form pogio to the 10th century.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used poggio for any rise of ground and for a small mound or bank, and also for a riverbank or embankment;^[2] di poggio in poggio meant “across hilly country”.^[2] It became a word of the Petrarchan poetic tradition, as in Petrarch's O poggi, o valli, o fiumi, o selve, o campi, and today it is popular only in Tuscany and literary elsewhere.^[3][13][7] It is common in place names such as Poggio a Caiano and Poggio Mirteto.^[14][7]

Ariosto used poggi for a woman's breasts.^[6][7] Architects used poggio for a base or pedestal, the learned sense of podio, and a Spanish poggio “stone seat” appears in 16th-century travel writing.^[15] Modern technical senses are the loading place in a marble quarry and, in golf, the poggio di partenza or tee.^[14][6]

The derivative poggiolo “balcony” is recorded in Medieval Latin at Venice in 1272 and as pogiuolo in Cennino Cennini around 1400.^[4][5]

Timeline

• 1235 – A Sienese document has the first record.^[2]
• 1250 – Medieval Latin at Bologna glosses podium as a height of ground.^[4]
• 1272 – Medieval Latin puzolus “balcony” is recorded at Venice.^[4]
• 1273 or 1274 – The Florentine place name a le Pogiora is recorded.^[4]
• c. 1400 – Cennino Cennini uses pogiuolo.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A low rounded hill with gentle slopes, lower than a collina; common in place names.^{[6][14][7][1]}
2. (industry) In marble quarrying, the place where the cut stone is loaded.^[6][14]
3. (golf) poggio di partenza, the tee.^[14][7]
4. (poetic) A woman's breast.^[6][7]
5. (archaic) A podium; a small terrace with a balustrade.^[11][6][16]

Word family

• poggiolo
• poggetto
• poggerello
• poggiata
• poggioso
• poggiaiolo

Related words

• podio
• poggiare
• appoggiare
• Latin podium
• French puy

Usage notes

Poggio is also a form of the verb poggiare (io poggio).^[17] A Tuscan farmers' proverb, loda il poggio e attienti al piano (“praise the hill and stick to the plain”), says that flat land yields more.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
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, 718
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c 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. ^ a b c d e f g h Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2987
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 719
16. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
17. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org