quinto

Forms

quinto (feminine quinta, masculine plural quinti, feminine plural quinte)^[1] Old Italian forms include quint, quento, cuinto and chuinto.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quīntus (“fifth”), the ordinal of quīnque (“five”).^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word has an older form quīnctus, found in Plautus.^[4][6][7] The same word is French quint, Occitan quint, Catalan quint, Spanish quinto and Portuguese quinto.^[4][8]

It goes back to Proto-Indo-European *penkʷtós, formed from the word for “five” with the ordinal suffix *-tós.^[4][1] Its cognates include Ancient Greek πέμπτος (pémptos), Old High German fimfto and German fünfte.^[4][7] De Vaan explains the Latin form by regular sound changes from Proto-Italic *kʷenktos: the vowel became /i/, the /k/ before /t/ became a spirant and lengthened it, and the spirant was then lost, giving the classical form; the long /iː/ spread from the ordinal to the cardinal.^[7] Devoto thought the long vowel unexplained.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record of the ordinal “fifth” is in Garzo, about 1225: Quinto e sesto grado / rinunzia parentado (“the fifth and sixth degree renounce kinship”).^[3][10] The TLIO's first text is the Roman Miracole de Roma of the mid-13th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The noun “one fifth part” is recorded before 1321 in Dante.^[3][2] The feminine quinta became a noun in several fields: the musical interval of a fifth from the second half of the 13th century (Giacomino da Verona), the side flat of a stage from 1780–98 (Carlo Gozzi), the fifth school year in 1922 and the fifth gear of a car in 1973.^[3] Why the stage flat is called quinta is debated: Nocentini says the depth of the stage was once divided on each side by five painted frames;^[4][3] DELI also considers a borrowing from Portuguese quinta (“country house”).^[4][3]

Other derivatives are quinterno, a gathering of five folded sheets (1288), and quintana, both a fever recurring every fifth day and a jousting game, the latter going back to the via quintana of the Roman camp.^[4][3] In place names, as with Sesto, Quinto marks the fifth mile from a centre on a Roman road.^[5] Modern phrases include quinta colonna (fifth column), quinto potere (the broadcast media) and quinta malattia (fifth disease).^[11][12][13]

Timeline

• About 1225 – Garzo uses quinto “fifth”.^[3]
• Mid-13th century – The Roman Miracole de Roma has the word.^[2]
• Second half of the 13th century – Quinta “interval of a fifth” appears in Giacomino da Verona.^[3]
• 1288 – Quinterno is recorded.^[4]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses quinto for a fifth part.^[3]
• 1780–1798 – Carlo Gozzi uses quinta for a stage flat.^[3]
• 1922 – Quinta “fifth school year” is recorded.^[3]
• 1973 – Quinta “fifth gear” is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. fifth: coming after the fourth in a series (5th, V); after the name of a ruler or pope it gives the order of succession: Il negozio è al quinto piano.^{[11][12][14][1]}
2. (literary) Combined with other numerals, it forms higher ordinals, as in decimoquinto.^[11][13]

Noun

1. One of five equal parts of a whole; a fifth: Ho speso un quinto dello stipendio in libri.^[11][15][1]
2. The person or thing in fifth place: È arrivato quinto, appena fuori dal podio.^[15][16]
3. A fifth of a litre, and a vessel of that measure, especially of wine.^[14][15]
4. (historical) A coin worth a fifth of a larger unit, especially a silver coin minted in Florence in the 16th century.^[11]
5. (nautical) In a wooden ship, one of the main frames that give the hull its outline.^[11]

Word family

• quinta
• quintana
• quinterno
• quintessenza
• quintetto
• quintultimo
• quintuplo
• squinternare

Related words

• cinque
• Latin quīntus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 f g h i Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3183
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 15, 164
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 Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli