Etymologically
Log in

sorella

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 21 October 2026 at 19:31. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • /soˈrɛl.la/[1]

Forms

sorella f (plural sorelle, diminutive sorellìna or (archaic) sorellétta, augmentative sorellóna, pejorative sorellàccia, endearing sorellùccia)[1]

Etymology

It is from Italian suora + -ella, a diminutive made on the model of fratello beside frate.[2][3][4][1] Between Latin and Italian, Migliorini observed, diminutives of kinship words often replaced their bases, as avolo and vecchio did, and once the base words became the titles of members of the new religious orders, the diminutives took over the ordinary sense.[4] The 14th-century Tuscan lexicon had several other terms of the same meaning: Old Italian suora, Old Italian sorore (Petrarch), and Old Italian sirocchia (Dante) with its variants Old Italian serocchia and Old Italian sorocchia.[4] Meyer-Lübke notes that the word covers the same area as the masculine.[5]

The base is Latin soror (“sister”), whose nominative gave French sœur and Romanian soră; the Iberian languages use Spanish hermana, Portuguese irmã and Catalan germana instead.[5][6] The diminutive Sicilian surredda means “cousin”.[6][5] The Latin noun continues Proto-Italic *swezōr and Proto-Indo-European *swésōr, with cognates such as Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌹𐍃𐍄𐌰𐍂 (swistar), Lithuanian sesuo, Russian сестра (sestrá) and English sister; de Vaan mentions that it may be a compound of a word for “self” and a word for “woman”.[7][1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI and GRADIT date the word to 1304–1308, in Dante, with the sense “female sibling”;[4][3][9][6] Zingarelli gives about 1261 and DEI the 13th century.[4][3][9][6]

Semantic evolution

Dante also used sorella for a thing of the same nature as another (1300–1313) and for a nun (before 1321).[4] Tommaseo quotes his image of the hoar-frost that copies “l'imagine di sua sorella bianca” (the image of her white sister), the snow.[10] DEI records the senses “cousin” (15th century, Feo Belcari) and “companion, friend” (14th century).[6] The adjective use after a noun, as in nazioni sorelle, is found in Mazzini before 1872, and città sorelle and isole sorelle in Tommaseo in 1873.[4]

Sorellastra “half-sister” came from northern Italy: Venetian sorelastra (1829) and Milanese sorellastra (1843), but the Venetian Gasparo Gozzi, who died in 1786, was the first to use it in Italian.[4] Sorellanza, modelled on fratellanza, is isolated in Florio's dictionary of 1611 and became current in the 20th century.[4] Today the word is also the title of Red Cross nurses, and le sette sorelle are the seven big oil companies.[3][11][9]

Timeline

  • c. 1261 – Zingarelli's date of first record.[9]
  • 1304–1308 – Dante uses sorella “sister”.[4]
  • Before 1321 – Dante uses it for a nun.[4]
  • 1611 – Sorellanza “sisterhood” appears in Florio's dictionary.[4]
  • Before 1786 – Gasparo Gozzi uses sorellastra.[4]
  • Before 1872 – Mazzini writes of nazioni sorelle.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. sister, a female person born of the same parents as another: mia sorella maggiore, sorella di latte, a girl nursed by the same wet nurse.[3][11][9]
  2. A title for nuns and for Red Cross nurses: sorella Teresa.[3][11][12]
  3. (figurative) A thing closely akin to another: L'ignoranza è sorella della paura.[3][9][13]
  4. (after a feminine noun, as an adjective) Kindred, of the same origin: città sorelle.[3][12][4]

Word family

  • sorellina
  • sorellastra
  • sorellanza
  • consorella

Usage notes

With a possessive, sorella takes no article in the singular (mia sorella), although popular and older usage has la mia sorella.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  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 d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  6. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3557
  7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  11. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  12. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  13. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana