stufare

Forms

stufare (first-person singular present stùfo, first-person singular past historic stufài, past participle stufàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *extufāre (“to warm”), formed with ex- and a verb made from Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “vapour, fever”) (the source of tifo).^[2][3][4] Nocentini, GRADIT and Devoto–Oli derive it from the related Greek verb τύφω (túphō, “to smoke, to give off smoke”).^[5][6][7] Devoto saw a Greek loan of an early period crossed with Latin typhus (“arrogance, swelling”).^[8] Treccani puts the Latin form with a “perhaps”, and Wiktionary instead starts from Medieval Latin stupha.^[9][1]

Nocentini calls the history of the word and of stufa beside their Romance relatives complex and not fully clear.^[5] The Gallo-Romance words start from a variant *extupāre and a noun *estūpa (“steam-bath room”): French étuve and later étuver, Occitan estuba and Catalan estuba.^[5][10] Spanish estufa and Spanish estofar, used of cooking, depend on Italian, through Neapolitan stofare according to Meyer-Lübke, and Portuguese borrowed estufar.^[5][10][1] Nocentini adds that the word passed into Germanic as “heated steam room”, giving Old High German stuba, German Stube, Old English stofa and English stove.^[5] Meyer-Lübke held the likeness to the German word to be accidental.^[10]

The sense “to bore, to annoy” comes from “to smoke out” by a metaphor like that of seccare “to dry; to bother”.^[5][2] The noun for the stove is a deverbal noun of the verb, and stufo “fed up” is a shortened past participle.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT dates the verb to the 13th century, in the Fiore, which it lists under Dante, and Zingarelli to 1287.^[6][3] There it means “to bathe someone in a hot bath”, the trade of the bath-keepers: the Fiore says a woman must be stufata, since the hot bath usually heals her.^[11][5] DELI's first record is later, in the carnival songs of the late 15th century, with the sense “to warm in a stove or heated room”, where the singers say that lo stufare è l'arte nostra.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

In old usage the verb covered bathing in a public hot bath or exposing the body to steam, and technical uses such as softening silk skeins in warm water or rinsing a barrel with a hot liquid.^[11] Heating materials in a furnace or a stove, and later treating silkworm cocoons or cheese curd with heat, continue the sense “to warm”.^[11][12][6]

The cooking sense, “to stew slowly in a closed pot”, is dated by DELI from the Spettacolo della natura (1786–1803), though Nocentini places it in the second half of the 14th century.^[2][5] The noun stufato “stew” is recorded before 1742.^[2]

The figurative sense “to sicken, to bore” is dated by DELI from Torquato Tasso, before 1595, and by Nocentini in the 14th century for the reflexive “to get bored”.^[2][5] The Tuscan proverb il pan di casa stufa “home bread palls” is recorded in 1853, and the reflexive stufarsi “to get fed up” is in Tommaseo's dictionary of 1873.^[2][11] In the colloquial language of today mi hai stufato means “I've had enough of you”.^[7][13]

Timeline

• 13th century – The Fiore uses stufata of a woman bathed in a hot bath.^[6][11]
• 1287 – Zingarelli's date for the first record.^[3]
• Late 15th century – The carnival songs use stufare for “to warm in a heated room”.^[2]
• Before 1595 – Torquato Tasso uses it for “to sicken, to bore”.^[2]
• 1598 – Florio records stuffo, the source of stufo “fed up”.^[2]
• Before 1742 – Stufato “stew” appears in G. B. Fagiuoli.^[2]
• 1786–1803 – The Spettacolo della natura uses the verb for slow cooking.^[2]
• 1873 – Tommaseo's dictionary records stufarsi “to get bored”.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (cooking) To stew: to cook food slowly over a low heat in a covered pot: stufare le zucchine.^{[6][7][14][3]}
2. (rare) To heat in a stufa or a similar device.^[6][3][14]
3. (technical) To treat with heat: to stifle silkworm cocoons with steam or hot air, or to keep cheese curd warm in cheese-making.^[6][7][9]
4. (figurative, colloquial) To bore, to annoy: to tire someone with too much of something: quella canzone mi ha stufato; used absolutely in hai stufato! “that's enough!”^{[6][7][14][3]}
5. (figurative, colloquial; as stufarsi) To get fed up, to grow tired of someone or something, often with di: si è stufato di aspettare.^{[7][14][3][13]}

Word family

• stufato
• stufatura
• stufa
• stufo
• ristufare
• stufatore

Related words

• tifo
• French étuve
• English stove

Usage notes

In the navy of the 17th century stufare also meant to wet with water in case of fire.^[15] The old stufaioli were the keepers of the public hot baths.^[11]

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 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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 430
9. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
10. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c d e f g Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
14. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3663