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romanzo

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Etymology and origin of the Italian word romanzo

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1200s Anonimo Genovese More words from the 12th century
Borrowed from
Old French romanz
Ultimate origin
Latin Roma

Pronunciation

  • /roˈman.d͡zo/, /roˈman.t͡so/[1]

Forms

romanzo m (plural romanzi)[1] As an adjective: feminine romanza, plural romanzi, romanze.[1] Old forms include Old Italian ramanzo and Old Italian romanso.[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French romanz, which from 1160 meant a narrative in French as opposed to one in Latin, then any narrative, first in verse, later also in prose (from the 13th century).[4][5][6][1] The Old French word, like Old Occitan romans, goes back to an adverb Late Latin romanice (“in the Roman way”), from Romanicus, from Romanus (“Roman”), from Roma (“Rome”).[5][7][4] The adverb was used with verbs of speaking, for the speech of the Romance peoples as against that of the Germans.[5][8][9] DELI notes that the medieval adverb is first recorded in the 11th century.[4]

In Dardano's account, which DELI quotes, Latin adjectives in ⟨-anicus⟩ meant “in the fashion of” a place, and the adjective in ⟨-anicus⟩ arose beside Romania, the whole of the Latin-speaking world.[4] The adverb in ⟨-ice⟩ was modelled on romane: where the older adverb meant simply “in Latin”, the new one meant “as the people of Romania speak”.[4] Shortened by syncope to romance, it named the new languages that came out of Latin.[4]

The same adverb gave Romansh rumantsch and, through French or Occitan, Spanish romance.[4][7] French roman also gave romantico.[5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in the Anonimo Genovese in the 13th century, and the TLIO's in the Florentine Tesoro translation at the end of that century.[4][2] The first sense is a long work in verse or prose, usually from France, telling the adventures of the knights of Arthur's court or the matter of Troy.[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Dante speaks of versi d'amore e prose di romanzi, “love poems and prose romances”.[4][10] In Old Italian the word could also mean a chronicle, and mettere in romanzo was to translate into the vernacular.[2][3] Petrarch's fola di romanzi (1374) already uses it for an unbelievable tale.[4] Boccaccio's company spend the afternoon chi a legger romanzi, chi a giucare a scacchi, some reading romances and some playing chess.[11]

The modern sense of a novel is in Redi before 1698.[4] The adjective came in with Gravina in 1708, who used lingua romanza for Provençal, and before 1729 Salvini wrote that the speech born of good Latin was called romanzo.[4] Filologia romanza is a calque of German romanische Philologie and appears in 1873.[4] Ramusio used romanzo for “Spanish” around 1555.[3]

The derivatives romanzesco (1708) and romanzare (in the modern sense 1877) followed, and romanza (1837) is an adaptation of Spanish romance.[4][5] In the 20th century romanzo fiume followed French roman fleuve.[3] English borrowed the word rarely, as romanso in 1628–1629.[12] Modern Greek has it as ρομάντζο.[1]

Timeline

  • 1160 – Old French romanz for a narrative in French.[4]
  • 13th century – Romanzo in the Anonimo Genovese.[4]
  • Late 13th century – Romanzo in the Florentine Tesoro translation.[2]
  • 1313–1319 – Dante's prose di romanzi.[4]
  • 1374 – Petrarch's fola di romanzi for an unbelievable tale.[4]
  • 1628–1629 – English romanso.[12]
  • Before 1698 – Redi uses romanzi for modern novels.[4]
  • 1708 – Gravina uses the adjective, lingua romanza.[4][6]
  • 1873 – Filologia romanza in the title of a journal.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A novel: a long narrative work in prose, of free invention and complex plot.[6][13][14]
  2. The novel as a literary genre.[6][13]
  3. (literature) A medieval romance: a long narrative in the vernacular, in verse or prose, about knights, heroes and love.[8][10]
  4. (figurative) A fantasy of the mind, an impossible plan.[6]
  5. A chain of events so extraordinary that it seems invented: Il suo viaggio in Africa è stato un romanzo.[6][14]
  6. An intense or unusual love affair.[6][1]

Adjective

  1. (linguistics) Romance: of the languages that come from Latin: lingue romanze.[6][8][13]
  2. Of the peoples and cultures that speak those languages: filologia romanza, the study of Romance languages and literatures.[6][8][10]

Word family

  • romanzesco
  • romanziere
  • romanzare
  • romanzetto
  • romanza
  • ramanzina
  • romanzeria
  • romanzista

Usage notes

DELI and GRADIT give the noun and the adjective as two headwords, romanzo 1 (the novel) and romanzo 2 (the language), and Nocentini numbers them the other way round, but all three derive both from Old French romanz.[4][6][5] Treccani gives /roˈmandzo/ and calls the common /roˈmantso/ incorrect.[15] The GDLI also has an obsolete romanzo for the Spanish romance, a narrative poem in octosyllables.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f 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 c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3279
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w 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 d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  8. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  9. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
  10. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
  11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  12. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  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. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  16. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Romanzo.” Etymologically, 14 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/it/romanzo. Accessed 15 Nov. 2026.

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