sciame

Forms

sciame m (plural sciami)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian sciamo, Old Italian isciame, Old Italian same and Old Italian samme.^[2] Old esciame and sciamo are obsolete variants.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin exāmen (“swarm of bees”), with the initial vowel lost.^{[5][6][7][1][8]} The same Latin word, in its sense “tongue of a balance”, gave the learned esame.^[6][1]

It is the same word as French essaim, Occitan eissam, Catalan eixam, Spanish enjambre and Portuguese enxame, and Engadine has sem.^[6][9][8] Albanian sheme was borrowed from Romance, probably through Venetian.^[8]

The Latin word goes back to Latin *exagsmen, from exigō (“to drive out”), which is ex- (“out”) and agō (“to drive”).^[6][10][1] Nocentini explains its two senses from the two senses of the verb: “to let go out” gave the bees sent out of the hive, and “to measure” gave the tongue of the balance.^[6] The LEI also points to the verb's sense “to expel”, since a swarm leaves the old hive to found a new one, a sense still alive in sciamare.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Proverbia que dicuntur, a Venetian text of the late 12th century, for a group of bees moving together.^[2] DELI dates the beekeeper's sense, the swarm that leaves the hive with a queen to found a new colony, to the Italian translation of Crescenzi, about 1350.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word was extended to other animals moving together and, figuratively, to a crowd of people, a people descended from one ancestor, or people of the same trade or age.^[2] DELI dates the sense “a moving multitude of people, animals or things” to the first half of the 14th century in the form sciamo, and in the form sciame to Boccaccio, before 1375.^[5] Boccaccio writes that it is childish to touch the beehive and not expect the stings of the whole swarm.^[11]

The verb sciamare, “to swarm”, is as old as the beekeeping sense; in the 19th century it also meant to leave a place in a mass, and Tommaseo–Bellini records peasants who “swarm” when they set up a household of their own.^[5] The word entered the sciences in the 20th century: DELI dates the sense of meteors with the same course to 1915, and modern Italian also has sciame sismico, a series of small earthquakes, and the particle sciame of physics.^[5][7][4]

In the dialects the word took many forms and senses: it is sciàmmia at Lucca, and on Monte Amiata sciamo is also the hive itself.^[12]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur use the word for a group of bees.^[2]
• 1290–1310 – The Pisan form isciame is recorded.^[8]
• 1309–1310 – The Sienese Costituto has sciame.^[8]
• First half of the 14th century – Guido da Pisa uses sciamo for a multitude.^[5]
• About 1350 – The translation of Crescenzi has sciame for a swarm of bees and the verb sciamare.^[5]
• Before 1375 – Boccaccio uses sciame for a multitude.^[5]
• 1891 – Sciamatura, the swarming of bees, is recorded.^[5]
• 1915 – The sense of a group of meteors is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A swarm of bees, or of other social insects such as ants or termites, that leaves the colony with a queen to found a new one.^{[7][4][13][14]}
2. A dense cloud of flying insects or other small animals moving together: uno sciame di mosche.^{[7][4][13][14]}
3. (figurative) A crowd or throng of people or things in movement: uno sciame di ciclisti.^{[7][4][13][14]}
4. (astronomy) sciame meteorico, sciame di meteore: a meteor shower, a group of meteors with parallel orbits.^[4][3][14]
5. (geology) sciame sismico: a series of minor earthquakes in one area over a limited time.^[4][3][14]
6. (physics) A shower of particles produced by high-energy radiation, such as cosmic rays, passing through matter.^{[7][4][13][14]}

Word family

• sciamare
• sciamatura

Related words

• esame
• esigere
• Latin exāmen

Usage notes

The phrase a sciami means “in swarms, in great numbers”.^[4][3][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 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
6. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b c d e f Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 21, 893
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 18, 18
12. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3396
13. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b c d e f g Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)