porro

Forms

porro m (plural porri)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pŏrrum (“leek”), also porrus in the masculine.^[2][3][4][1] The word is found across the Romance languages: Occitan porre, Catalan porre, Spanish puerro, Portuguese porro, Sardinian porru and Romanian por;^[3][5] French poireau is a derivative.^[3][5]

Cortelazzo and Zolli and GRADIT call the Latin word pre-Indo-European.^[2][6] Nocentini and DEI compare it with Ancient Greek πράσον (práson, “leek”) and see two parallel loans from a Mediterranean substrate language, as often with plant names.^[3][7] De Vaan notes that both words can go back to one Indo-European form, and reports Weiss's proposal to connect them with Proto-Indo-European *perso- “ear of grain” or “sheath”, which he finds hard to justify in meaning.^[8] Wiktionary takes the Latin word from this source.^[1]

The sense “wart” grew out of the plant name: Nocentini explains it by the popular view of such growths as a foreign body sprouting in the skin, as with orzaiolo.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Sienese Mattasalà di Spinello, of 1233–1243, where the word names the garden plant.^[9][3][2] The sense “wart” appears about 1350, in the Italian translation of Pietro de' Crescenzi's treatise on agriculture.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian forms include por, pore, poro, porru and puori.^[9] In the introduction to the fourth day of the Decameron, Boccaccio answers those who speak against his age that though the leek has a white head, its tail is green: perchè il porro abbia il capo bianco, che la coda sia verde.^[10] Botanists named varieties: the porro capitato is recorded in 1544, and Linnaeus fixed the scientific name Allium porrum.^[7]

Several old figurative phrases rest on the plant: mangiare il porro dalla coda “to eat the leek from the tail”, to start at the wrong end;^[4][11] non vale una buccia di porro, it is worth nothing; and piantare un porro “to plant a leek”, to deceive someone.^[4][11] The sense “wart” is common in the dialects.^[7] In veterinary use porro is also a canker of the horse's frog.^[12] Alemannic German borrowed the word.^[1]

Timeline

• 1233–1243 – The Sienese Mattasalà di Spinello records porro for the leek.^[9][3]
• 1280 – GRADIT's date for the word.^[6]
• About 1350 – The translation of Pietro de' Crescenzi uses porro for a wart.^[2]
• 1544 – Porro capitato is named.^[7]
• 1863 – The adjective porroso “warty” is recorded.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. leek: the vegetable with a long white bulb and pale green tubular leaves, and the plant itself (Allium porrum), a kind of garlic.^[6][13][4]
2. (colloquial) A wart, a small hard rounded growth on the skin.^[6][13][14]
3. (veterinary) A canker of the horse's frog.^[12]

Word family

• porraccio
• porrandello
• porrata
• porroso
• porrina
• porrone

Related words

• Latin porrum
• French poireau

Usage notes

Erba da porri “wart herb” is the greater celandine, once used against warts.^[13][6] Porro settile is an old name for chives, which recent authors have miswritten as porro sottile.^[4][6] The 19th-century adverb porro “further, then”, in the Latin phrase porro unum est necessarium from the Gospel of Luke, is a separate word, taken from Latin.^[7] The prisma di Porro of optics is named after the surveyor and instrument-maker Ignazio Porro (1801–1875).^[6]

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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
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 Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3026
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 Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
12. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ 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
14. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse