tagliare

Forms

tagliare (first-person singular present tàglio, first-person singular past historic tagliài, past participle tagliàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and dialect forms include tagghiare, taiare, talare, taliare and talliare.^[2] Neapolitan tale “log” and Calabrian taya “tree stump” continue the Latin noun.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tāliō (“to cut, prune”), recorded from the 6th century in the writings of the Roman land surveyors, a verb formed from Latin tālia, a variant of tālea (“cutting, slip of a plant; stake”).^[4][5][6][1] Its first sense was therefore “to cut off a branch”.^[4] The surveyors also have taliatura (“cleft”) and taliatus (“split”), and Nonius explains intertaliō (“to divide or cut off a branch”).^[4][7] DÉRom reconstructs the Proto-Romance verb “to cut” behind all these forms: since every branch of Romance has it, it belongs to the oldest layer of Proto-Romance, where it largely replaced the verb continued from secō.^[8]

The verb is pan-Romance: French tailler, Occitan talhar, Catalan tallar, Spanish tajar, Portuguese talhar, Sardinian tazare, Romanian tăia and Dalmatian taluor.^[5][3][9]

The origin of tālea is unknown.^[5][10] A link with Ancient Greek τᾶλις (tâlis, “girl, bride”) through a basic meaning “to sprout” is, for de Vaan, a wild guess; the only alternative is a derivative of tālus (“ankle, knuckle”).^[10][1] M. Alinei took the Latin noun as the neuter plural of tālis (“such”), against the usual view.^[4]

Several uses follow French models: the phrases for blocking the way and for cutting short match those with French couper, and taglia in the sense “body size” follows French taille.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is in the Contrasto of Cielo d'Alcamo (1231–1250), with the sense “to remove a part by cutting”: tagliarami le trezze, “I will cut off my plaits”.^[4] GRADIT puts the first record before 1250 and Nocentini at the beginning of the 13th century.^[6][5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb already meant to divide with a blade, to wound, and to be sharp;^[4] Dante uses it without an object for a blade that cuts.^[4] Giovanni Villani also used tagliare for “to impose a ransom” on prisoners, from taglia in that sense.^[2][11]

Later senses extend the image of cutting through something: “to cross, intersect” (before 1566, Ruscelli), “to split” (Galileo), “to plough through the waves”, and “to shorten, condense” a text (both in Tommaseo, 1879).^[4] The intransitive “to take the shortest way” is in Petrocchi's dictionary of 1891.^[4] Military Italian has tagliare fuori “to cut off from the base” (1611), and the wine trade tagliare il vino “to blend wine” (1839), like French couper le vin.^[12]

Many idioms are built on the verb: tagliare la corda “to slip away”, a sailors' phrase for cutting the cable to sail off, spread in Tuscany in the 20th century;^[12][13] tagliare i ponti “to break off relations”;^[4][14] tagliare i panni addosso “to speak ill of someone”; and tagliare la testa al toro “to settle a question once and for all”, which DELI explains as the last act of the old bullfights.^[4][14]

Timeline

• 1231–1250 – Cielo d'Alcamo uses tagliare “to cut off”.^[4]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses the verb for a blade that cuts.^[4]
• 14th century – Tagliare “to impose a ransom” in Giovanni Villani.^[2]
• Before 1566 – The sense “to cross, intersect” is recorded.^[4]
• 1611 – Tagliar fuori is recorded as a military term.^[12]
• 1805 – Tagliare la strada “to block the way” is recorded.^[12]
• 1879 – Tommaseo records “to shorten, abridge” and “to plough through”.^[4]
• 1891 – Petrocchi records the intransitive “to take a short cut”.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cut, divide into parts with a blade or other sharp tool: Taglia il pane a fette sottili.^[6][13][15]
2. (intransitive) To be sharp, to cut well: Queste forbici non tagliano più.^[6][15]
3. To make a cut or incision in; to wound: Si è tagliato un dito aprendo la scatoletta.^[6][16]
4. To cut off, remove a part; to fell trees, mow hay; to amputate.^[6][16][14]
5. To trim, shorten: tagliarsi i capelli, tagliare le unghie.^[6][16]
6. To cut out a garment from cloth following a pattern.^[6][15]
7. To shorten or cut a text, film or budget: Il regista ha tagliato due scene.^[16][14]
8. To cut off, interrupt a supply or communication: tagliare la luce, tagliare i viveri.^[6][15]
9. To cross, cut across; to plough through the waves, tagliare la strada, to cut in front of someone.^[6][4][14]
10. To blend wine; to cut a drug with other substances.^[15][1]

Word family

• taglio
• taglia
• tagliato
• tagliata
• tagliatella
• tagliente
• tagliando
• tagliatore
• tagliuzzare
• taglieggiare
• intagliare
• ritagliare
• stagliare
• frastagliare
• attagliarsi
• tagliaborse
• taglialegna
• tagliacarte
• tagliaunghie

Related words

• talea
• tagliere
• French tailler

Usage notes

Devoto–Oli, Gabrielli and the GDLI give a separate, archaic tagliare “to impose a ransom or tribute”, formed from taglia.^[13][17][2] An old noun tagliare meant the cutting edge of a blade, as in Cavalca's coltello da due tagliari, “a two-edged knife”.^[2][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 20, 671
3. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3698
8. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
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. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3699
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. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
16. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli