rocchio

Forms

rocchio m (plural rocchi)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin rotulus (“roll, cylinder”), a diminutive of Latin rota (“wheel”).^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary and Körting put a form Vulgar Latin *roclus (Körting, after Gröber, *roculus) between the two, and Devoto compares vecchio from vetulus, with the same change of /tl/ to /kl/ and then to ⟨cchi⟩ /kkj/.^[1][5][6] In Late Latin the word took on the senses “cylindrical block of stone” and “sausage”.^[3]

The same Latin word gave rotolo, and through French ruolo;^[7][5] REW lists dialect outcomes such as Corsican rokyu “piece of wood”, and Venetian rolco “bunch of grapes” at Treviso.^[7][5]

Latin rota goes back to Proto-Italic *rotā, from Proto-Indo-European *Hreth₂- (“to run, roll”); de Vaan explains it as the feminine of an old adjective “revolving”.^[8][1] Related are Lithuanian rãtas (“wheel”) and Old High German rad (“wheel”).^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Dante's Inferno (1300–1313), where the poet weeps leaning on one of the rocchi of the rocky ridge: a squat, roughly cylindrical lump of stone.^[2][10][11]

Semantic evolution

In Dante and his commentators a rocchio is a jutting crag or boulder, a sense the GDLI follows into Carducci and Pirandello.^[10] More generally it named a piece of wood or stone of limited size, cut off a trunk and roughly cylindrical, and Tommaseo cites timber sawn into rocchi.^[11]

The architectural sense, each of the drum-shaped blocks of a column shaft, is first recorded in Vasari in 1550.^[2] In the kitchen a rocchio is the stretch of sausage between two knots, or a cylindrical slice of eel or swordfish.^[12][13][14] Tuscan once used it for a pad of hair used to fill out a woman's hairstyle, and in 18th-century artillery it was the pivot on which a gun carriage turned.^[14][12]

Timeline

• 1300–1313 – Dante uses rocchi for the lumps of rock in the Inferno.^[2][10]
• 1550 – Vasari uses rocchio for a drum of a column shaft.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (architecture) Each of the cylindrical drums of stone that, laid one on another, make up the shaft of a non-monolithic colonna.^{[12][15][13][16]}
2. A short, thick, roughly cylindrical piece of something: Il ceppo fu segato in rocchi.^{[12][4][15][16]}
3. A cylindrical portion cut crosswise from an eel or a swordfish, or the length of salsiccia between two knots of the casing.^[12][4][13]
4. A roll of coins wrapped in paper.^[12][17]
5. (literary) A jutting crag or boulder.^[12][10]
6. (Tuscan, archaic) A cylindrical pad of hair or other material once used to fill out a woman's hairstyle.^[4][15][14]

Word family

• rocchione
• arrocchiare

Related words

• rotolo
• ruolo
• ruota
• Latin rotulus

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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d 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 c Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
6. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli