Etymologically
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scala

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Pronunciation

Forms

scala f (plural scale)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin scālae (“ladder; stairs”), a plural that classical Latin used with either singular or plural force and that passed to the singular in Late Latin.[2][3][4][5] Quintilian condemned the singular as a barbarism.[5] The same word is French échelle, Occitan escala, Catalan escala, Spanish escala, Sardinian iscala and Romanian scară, and Portuguese escala was taken from Spanish.[6][7][8] Through Greek the Latin word reached Turkish iskele (“landing stage”).[9][7]

The Latin noun was formed from scandō (“to climb, mount”) as *skand-slā, a noun of the instrument for climbing.[6][10][11][9] The verb goes back through Proto-Italic *skand-e/o- (“to ascend”) to Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to jump up, ascend”), the source also of Sanskrit स्कन्दति (skándati, “leaps, springs”) and Old Irish sceinnid (“jumps”).[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Ugieri Apugliese, in the first half of the 13th century, with the sense “staircase”: the poet lists his trades, “I measure land and make stairs” (Misuro terra e faccio scale).[2][12] Nocentini and Devoto–Oli date the word to the 12th century, GRADIT to the end of the 13th.[6][13][3]

Semantic evolution

The plural scale for a flight of steps is in the Novellino (late 13th century), and Iacopone da Todi, who died in 1306, uses the word for a ladder with rungs.[2] Dante's Cacciaguida warns him how hard a road it is “to go down and up another man's stairs” (lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale, Paradiso 17), a line about the bitterness of exile.[14]

Abstract senses came later: the cartographer's scale, the ratio between a length on the drawing and the real one, is first recorded before 1574 in Vasari, the musical scale in 1556 in Daniele Barbaro, any series ordered by degrees in 1666 in Magalotti, and the graduated part of an instrument in 1842.[2] Several scales are named after their inventors: the Celsius scale after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, the Mercalli scale of earthquakes after the Milanese seismologist Giuseppe Mercalli.[2] In poker a scala is a straight (1940), and the card game scala quaranta takes its name from the forty points a player must lay down in sequences.[2] The proverb il mondo è fatto a scale, chi le scende e chi le sale “the world is made of stairs: some go down them and some go up” speaks of the changing fortunes of people.[4]

Some fixed phrases follow other languages: su larga scala “on a large scale” copies French sur une grande échelle (1835), and scala mobile in the economic sense of a wage index is almost certainly a calque of English sliding scale, perhaps helped by French échelle mobile, while scala mobile “escalator” grew out of the older Italian sense “portable ladder”.[2]

English scale (1412–1420, in technical senses; musical scale 1598) may come from Italian or from Latin, and German Skala from Italian (1548); French échelle took the musical sense from Italian in 1703.[15] Arabic borrowed the word as Arabic سِقَالَة (siqāla).[1]

Timeline

  • First half of the 13th century – Ugieri Apugliese uses scale for stairs.[2]
  • Late 13th century – The Novellino uses the plural for a flight of steps.[2]
  • Before 1306 – Iacopone da Todi uses scala for a ladder.[2]
  • 1412–1420 – English scale is first recorded in technical senses.[15]
  • 1548 – German Skala is first recorded.[15]
  • 1556 – Daniele Barbaro uses scala for a musical scale.[2]
  • Before 1574 – Vasari uses it for the scale of a drawing.[2]
  • 1666 – Magalotti uses it for any series ordered by degrees.[2]
  • 1835 – French sur une grande échelle, the model of su larga scala, is recorded.[2]
  • 1940 – Palazzi records the sense “straight” in poker.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A staircase: a structure of steps, often in several flights with landings, that leads from one level to another: L'ascensore è guasto, quindi oggi faccio le scale a piedi.[3][13][16]
  2. A ladder: a portable frame of two side pieces joined by rungs: Mi serve una scala per arrivare all'ultimo ripiano della libreria.[3][13][16]
  3. A series of elements ordered by size, intensity or importance; a hierarchy: Nella scala delle sue priorità il lavoro viene sempre per ultimo.[3][16][17]
  4. (science, technology) A system of conventional values for measuring a phenomenon: la scala Richter, la scala Celsius.[3][16][2]
  5. (cartography, technical drawing) The scale, the ratio between the measurements of a representation and those of the real object: Il plastico riproduce il quartiere in scala uno a cento.[16][2]
  6. (by extension) Extent, size, range: L'azienda vuole vendere i suoi prodotti su scala mondiale.[16]
  7. (music) A succession of notes ordered by pitch.[2][18][1]
  8. (card games) In poker, a straight, a sequence of five cards of consecutive value.[16][2]

Word family

  • scalo
  • scalata
  • scalatore
  • scalea
  • scaleo
  • scaletta
  • scalinata
  • scalino
  • scalone
  • scalare
  • sottoscala
  • scandire
  • Latin scando
  • French échelle

Usage notes

An old homograph scala meant “port of call, landing place”, a sense now taken by scalo: Ariosto has fare scala “to put in at a port”, and Medieval Latin scala “port” is recorded at Genoa in 1157.[9][19][12] GRADIT dates it before 1442 and calls its origin uncertain, perhaps the same word, while Sabatini–Coletti, Gabrielli and the GDLI treat it as a feminine form of scalo.[3][16][20][12] French escale may come from it or from Occitan.[15]

Fare le scale is the everyday phrase for going up or down the stairs.[3][4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  4. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  8. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3364
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
  12. ^ a b c 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 Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  15. ^ a b c d Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  17. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  18. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org
  19. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
  20. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli