rotondo

Forms

rotondo (feminine rotonda, masculine plural rotondi, feminine plural rotonde)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian retondo, Old Italian ritondo, Old Italian redondo and Old Italian ridondo, and Old Italian rotonno in old Roman texts.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rotundus (“round”).^[4][5][1] The oldest Italian forms, Old Italian retondo (1282) and ritondo (before 1294), go back to a Latin variant with e, recorded in Late Latin as retundus from the 7th century; the modern form is the old word brought back into line with Latin.^[3][5][6][1] The other Romance languages also continue the e form: French rond, Occitan redon, Catalan rodó, Spanish redondo, Portuguese redondo and Romanian rătund.^[5][7] The old form was shortened to tondo.^[5][7]

The dictionaries derive the Latin adjective from rota (“wheel”).^[4][5][6] The OLD and Devoto see it rather as a verbal adjective, formed like secundus (“following”) beside sequor (“to follow”).^[8][9] Devoto takes it from a verb meaning “to run”, lost in Latin but kept in Irish, so that the word first meant “running round”; the o would come from a crossing with the noun for “wheel”, and the older *retundus would be the form the Romance languages kept.^[9] Wiktionary reports a deponent *retōr from Proto-Indo-European *Hreth₂-, with the o taken from the noun for “wheel”, and the suggestion that the e form is the original one, as well as an explanation of it by dissimilation or by the prefix re-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Restoro d'Arezzo has retondo in 1282, and Latini ritondo before 1294, in the sense “shaped like a globe, ball, wheel, circle or cylinder”.^[3][4] Latini describes a meadow that or parea ritondo, / ora avea quadratura, “now seemed round, now square”, and Giamboni a scudo ritondo, a round shield woven of withies.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Dante's un ritondo vaso is a cylindrical vessel, and Petrarch speaks of the endless round path of the heavens, la strada ritonda ch'è infinita.^[3][10] The form rotondo is recorded in Machiavelli, before 1527; in 1505 Bembo used the word for a style with a full, harmonious, sonorous period.^[3]

In Rome the Pantheon is la Rotonda, popularly la Ritonna.^[11] In music the word named the round flat sign (1657) and passed into French in 1703; an English rotound of 1433 may come from it or from Latin.^[12] The tavola rotonda, a round table, is recorded in 1939–1940.^[3] Modern Italian applies the word to whole numbers, to wines with a soft, full taste, to an even pedal stroke in cycling and to a clear-cut win.^[4][13][14] For simple roundness tondo is the more popular word.^[15]

Timeline

• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo writes retondo.^[3]
• Before 1294 – Latini writes ritondo.^[3][4]
• Before 1321 – Dante's un ritondo vaso, a cylindrical vessel.^[3]
• 1433 – English rotound is recorded once.^[12]
• 1505 – Bembo uses it for a harmonious style.^[3]
• Before 1527 – Rotondo appears in Machiavelli.^[3]
• 1657 – It names the round flat sign in music.^[12]
• 1939–1940 – Tavola rotonda is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. round: shaped like a circle, sphere or cylinder: Nel cortile c'era una fontana rotonda di marmo.^[4][14][15]
2. Of parts of the body, rounded and full; of a person, plump, chubby.^[4][6][13]
3. (figurative) Of style or a sentence, harmonious and flowing; of a pedal stroke, even; of sleep, deep and unbroken.^[4][14][15]
4. Of taste, smooth; of wine, soft and full-bodied.^[4][13][15]
5. Of a number, whole, without fractions or decimals; of a figure, rounded off.^[4][16]
6. (sports) Of a score or win, clear-cut, decisive.^[14][13]
7. (anatomy) In muscolo grande rotondo and muscolo piccolo rotondo, the teres major and teres minor muscles of the shoulder.^[14][6][16]
8. (palaeography) Of handwriting, with letters as wide as they are high.^[14][16]

Noun

1. The round part of something.^[4][13][16]
2. (bookbinding) The concave curve of a book's fore-edge and the convex curve of its spine.^[4][6][16]

Word family

• arrotondare
• rotonda
• rotondeggiare
• rotondeggiante
• rotondità
• arrotondamento
• rotondamente
• rotondastro
• rotondetto
• rotondare
• rotondezza
• rotondino
• semirotondo

Related words

• tondo
• ruota
• Latin rotundus
• French rond

Usage notes

Tavola rotonda is both a round table and, figuratively, a round-table discussion.^[13][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 j k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 17, 142
11. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 854
12. ^ a b c 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 d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
16. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana