tavola

Forms

tavola f (plural tavole, diminutive tavolèlla or tavolétta or tavolettina or tavolina, augmentative tavolóna, pejorative tavolàccia or tavolùccia)^[1] The earliest record has the form Old Italian taula, which is used by Guittone d'Arezzo.^[2][3][4] Old and dialect forms listed by the GDLI include tabla, tàbola, tàola and tòla.^[5] The dialect forms Venetian tola (Venice, Emilia) and toa (Genoa) mean a table or a cobbler's bench.^[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tabula (“board, plank”).^[2][1] Most of its other meanings, many of them already Latin, grew out of that basic sense.^[2][7][8][1] The same word is French table (the source of table), Occitan taula, Catalan taula, Spanish tabla and Portuguese tábua; it was borrowed early by the Germanic languages: Old High German zabel and tavala, whence German Tafel.^[7][6] Wiktionary calls the learned tabula and the later tavolo doublets of it.^[1]

The Latin word has only one sure cognate, Umbrian tafle, a form of an Umbrian word for an implement used to carry the sacrificial fire.^[7][9] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *taflā- and, following Southern, suggests a root without the initial s- meaning “stand”, the one in Latin stō (“to stand”), with an instrumental suffix: the board would be “that which stands”; he calls this uncertain.^[9] Nocentini gives the same explanation, from a variant Proto-Indo-European *stā- (“to stand”) without the s-.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is the form taula in a Pisan account of a ship's expenses from the early 12th century, in the sense of a long, thin wooden board.^[2][8][5] The form tavola is used by Boccaccio (1348–1353), who also has the plural for a floor of boards.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Most senses go back to the 13th and 14th centuries: a slab of marble (1306), the table at which meals are eaten (late 13th century, Novellino), the piece of furniture in general (14th century), and a painting on a wooden panel, especially an altarpiece (before 1363, Villani).^[2][10] Old Italian also used the word for a banker's counter (Boccaccio) and for the board of a game, giocare a tavole (Novellino).^[10][4] Tavola could also mean the food itself, as in la buona tavola, good cooking.^[8][10]

Later senses include a workbench or flat tool (1561), a plate of illustrations in a book (before 1566), an index or table of contents (16th century), the belly of a violin (before 1647), a table of figures (1891), and a group of diners (1922).^[2][10] As a land measure, Medieval Latin tabula is recorded at Parma and Reggio in 878, and Italian tavola by Pacioli in 1494.^[11][2]

tavolo is a later word: it was first resisted as a needless double of tavola and seems to be an adaptation of the Milanese or Venetian form;^[2][7] Nocentini dates it to 1812.^[2][7] The tavola rotonda of the Arthurian romances goes back to French: the first record of the Round Table is in Wace's Roman de Brut, in the mid-12th century, and the modern round-table discussion follows English round table (1889).^[2] Outside Tuscany it is now the usual word for the piece of furniture.^[7] The word was borrowed as Arabic طاولة (ṭāwila, “table”), and through Ottoman it gave Turkish tavla (“backgammon”), whence Modern Greek τάβλι (távli).^[1]

Timeline

• Early 12th century – Taula “board” appears in a Pisan account of ship expenses.^[2]
• Late 13th century – The sense “dining table” appears in the Novellino.^[2]
• 1306 – Giordano da Pisa mentions two tavole of marble.^[2]
• 1348–1353 – Boccaccio uses the form tavola.^[2]
• Before 1363 – Villani uses the word for a painted panel.^[2]
• 1494 – Pacioli uses it for a land measure.^[2]
• Before 1566 – Ruscelli uses it for a plate in a book.^[2]
• 1812 – Tavolo is recorded.^[7]
• 1922 – The sense “the diners at a table” is recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A board or plank: a long, flat piece of wood of little thickness: Ha inchiodato due tavole sulla finestra rotta.^[8][12][13]
2. A flat slab or sheet of another material: una tavola di vetro.^[14][15]
3. A table, especially the one at which meals are eaten: La cena è pronta, venite a tavola!^[8][12][13]
4. The food served, cooking: apprezzare la buona tavola.^[8][13]
5. The people sitting at a table.^[8][13]
6. A board or flat implement for a particular task: tavola da stiro, an ironing board.^[8][12][13]
7. (art) A wooden panel prepared for painting, and a painting on such a panel: una tavola di Giotto.^[8][13]
8. A full-page illustration in a book; a table of figures or data: tavola pitagorica, the multiplication table.^[2][1][16]

Word family

• tavolo
• tavoletta
• tavolino
• tavolata
• tavolato
• tavoliere
• tavolozza
• tavolaccio
• intavolare
• capotavola

Related words

• tabella
• tabulato
• tabula
• French table

Usage notes

Common phrases include mettere le carte in tavola, to lay one's cards on the table, tavola rotonda, a round-table discussion, tavola calda, a snack bar, and calcare le tavole del palcoscenico, to tread the boards.^[8][14][16] Where the piece of furniture is meant, tavolo is more common outside Tuscany, while tavola is used above all for the table laid for a meal.^[7][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 980
5. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975)
11. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3733
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
16. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana