renaccio

Forms

renaccio m (uncountable)^[1] The GDLI records a dialect form renacchio.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin arenaceus (“sandy”), with the loss of the first syllable as in rena.^{[3][4][5][1][6]} The Latin adjective is arēna (“sand”) with the suffix -āceus.^[7][1][8] Devoto saw arenaceus crossed with the Italian noun, and Zingarelli and Wiktionary also read it as that noun with the depreciative suffix -accio.^[9][10][1]

The Latin word survives in Italian, mostly in the south, and in Occitan arenás (“sandy ground”) of Nice.^[6] Dialect forms include Romagnol arnaz, Sicilian rinazzu and Neapolitan arenaccia (“very sandy ground”).^[6] The learned arenaceo is a 16th-century formation.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the vernacular Palladio of about 1340, on plants that do best in renaccio, dry sandy ground: avventano migliori nel renaccio.^{[6][2][11][3]}

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the sense of sandy, dry and barren ground.^[3][4][8] Daniello Bartoli in 1677 described land that was tutto renaccio morto, palude pantanosa, “all dead sand, a muddy swamp”.^[2][6] An old treatise on falcons used it for the part of the shore or riverbed left dry, where the waves throw up fish;^[2][11] Tommaseo gives this as an obsolete synonym of renaio.^[2][11]

In the dialects it also means river sand used to scour kitchen pots (Aquilan rinaccio), tufaceous earth in the Abruzzi, and in Sicily the sandy plain of an old riverbed.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1340 – The vernacular Palladio uses renaccio for sandy soil.^[6][3]
• 1643 – Oudin's dictionary records the word.^[6]
• 1677 – Daniello Bartoli uses renaccio morto.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (uncommon) sandy ground that is dry and barren: su quel renaccio non cresce nulla.^{[3][4][5][8][10]}

Related words

• rena
• renaio
• arenaceo
• Latin harenaceus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 15, 796
3. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 1049
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET