tamagno

Forms

tamagno (feminine tamagna, masculine plural tamagni, feminine plural tamagne)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tam magnus (“so great”), from tam (“so”) and magnus (“great”).^[2][3][1][4] Devoto and Treccani consider it a northern word that reached the literary language through northern tradition.^[5][6]

The same phrase gave Friulian tamagn, Spanish tamaño, Portuguese tamanho and Occitan tamanh, and Old Engadine had tamaing.^[4][1] The form Emilian tamogn of Bologna was reshaped under the influence of Latin multum.^[4]

The Latin adverb is an old accusative feminine of a pronoun stem.^[7][1] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *tām and Proto-Indo-European *teh₂m.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is recorded from the 13th century.^[9] Its first quotations are in northern texts: the Anonymous Genoese poet and Bonvesin de la Riva, who writes of il me' dolore tamagno (“my so great sorrow”).^[10][4]

Semantic evolution

DEI calls the word Old Lombard and Old Genoese.^[4] Used absolutely it meant “very big”, or the opposite, “very small”, and in that sense the diminutive tamagnino served as a nickname for a short person, as in the Tamagnin dalla Porta of Boccaccio's Decameron.^[6]

Timeline

• 1200s – First records, in northern Italian texts.^[9][10]
• 1600s – The diminutive tamagnino is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (archaic) so big, as big as that.^[2][3][11]
2. (archaic, absolute use) Very big.^[3][12]

Word family

• tamagnino
• tamanto

Related words

• Spanish tamaño
• Latin magnus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3706
5. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 437
6. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 20
11. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli