ruvido

Forms

ruvido (feminine ruvida, masculine plural ruvidi, feminine plural ruvide)^[1] Old forms include rugida and ruveda, and Tommaseo lists rubido.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rūgidus (“wrinkled”), formed on rūga (“wrinkle, crease”).^[4][5][6][1] Förster reconstructed the Latin adjective in 1879, Gaston Paris doubted it, and it was later found in an inscription on a terracotta vessel from Bosnia kept in Sarajevo.^[4][7] Nocentini, GRADIT and Zingarelli still mark it as a reconstructed *rūgidus.^[5][6][8]

Devoto and Sabatini–Coletti explain the /v/: the /g/ before /i/ was lost entirely, as in dito, giving *ruidus, and a /v/ was then inserted to keep the two vowels apart, as in rovina beside Latin ruīna.^[9][10] Körting also mentions a Latin rūidus (“rough”), found once in Pliny in a doubtful passage, but prefers the form with /g/.^[7] The same word is Piedmontese rùvid.^[1]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Italic *rougā and Proto-Indo-European *h₁roug-h₂- (“wrinkle”), and de Vaan connects it with ērūgō (“to belch”), through the sense “rugged”.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is the 13th-century Italian translation of the Diatessaron, where the sea beasts will have li brazi rugidi e grandessimi (“rough and enormous arms”), with the sense “not smooth”.^[4][12] In Dante's Purgatorio (before 1321) the second step of the stair is d'una petrina ruvida e arsiccia (“of a rough and scorched stone”).^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense of a person with rough manners and a harsh character is recorded before 1348, in Nicolò de' Rossi.^[4] Old Italian also used it of what is hard to bear, and Boccaccio has it of icy water, a sense now obsolete.^[2][4][8] Petrarch's ruvido carme for the verse of Ennius gave the literary sense “rough, unpolished”.^[6][13][14]

The nouns ruvidezza (14th century) and ruvidità (before 1565, Varchi) followed.^[4][5] Modern uses include the taste of a young, harsh wine, bacterial colonies with a granular look, and a rough, forceful tackle in football.^[6][8][10] English borrowed the word as the rare ruvid “brusque” in 1632, later also “rough to the touch”, and formed ruvidous in 1832.^[15]

Timeline

• 1200s – The Italian Diatessaron has the first record.^[4]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses ruvida of the stone of a stair in the Purgatorio.^[2]
• Before 1348 – Nicolò de' Rossi uses it of a person's harsh manners.^[4]
• 1300s – Ruvidezza is recorded.^[4][5]
• Before 1565 – Varchi uses ruvidità.^[4]
• 1632 – English ruvid is recorded.^[15]
• 1700s – The verb irruvidire is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. rough, coarse: not smooth to the touch, scabro: Questa carta ruvida è adatta al carboncino.^{[6][13][8][14]}
2. Of the skin: chapped, cracked.^[6][8]
3. (figurative) Of a person or manner: brusque, gruff, unfriendly: Il portiere ha un modo di fare ruvido ma è gentile.^[6][13][14]
4. (sport) Of a play in football: rough, forceful.^[10]
5. (oenology) Of wine: rather harsh and tart.^[6][13][8]
6. (figurative, literary) Rough, unpolished, unrefined.^[6][13][8]
7. (microbiology) Of a bacterial colony: granular in appearance.^[6][14]
8. (obsolete) Icy, freezing.^[8][2]

Word family

• ruvidezza
• ruvidità
• ruvidamente
• irruvidire
• irruvidimento
• arruvidire

Related words

• ruga
• rugoso

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 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 Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 381
10. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
13. ^ a b c d e 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 c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it