tino

Forms

tino m (plural tini)^[1] An old and popular Tuscan plural is le tina, and Old Italian also had le tinora.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tīnum, recorded in the Tironian notes, a form beside and depending on Latin tīna (“a kind of wine jar”).^[5][6][7][1] DELI explains it from the frequent reading of the feminine singular tīna as a neuter plural, from which a singular tīnum was taken.^[5][3] The wavering of gender is still visible in Crescenzi and his translators.^[5]

The other Romance languages continue the feminine: French tine, Occitan tina, Catalan tina and Spanish tina, and Engadine tina.^[6][8]

The origin of Latin tīna is uncertain.^[9][10] DELI and Nocentini take it from Ancient Greek δῖνος (dînos, “round vessel”) through Etruscan, which would explain the initial /t/ and the change of gender.^[5][6] Wiktionary derives it from Etruscan 𐌈𐌉𐌍𐌀 (θina, “a kind of vessel”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a Florentine account of 1284, which mentions a large chestnut-wood tub to put under the tino at the grape harvest: the vat for treading and fermenting grapes.^[5][3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word also named a wine vessel and a tub.^[11] Its diminutive tinello (1374) took the sense “room where the servants of a great house ate”, recorded in 1463, and later in the north “small dining room by the kitchen”.^[5] Nocentini explains this by the Latin use of the word for the wine cellar, continued in Roman tino “tavern”.^[6] DELI also notes that the Tironian notes list tinum with words for the cellar, but finds the change hard to explain.^[5] Tinello passed into French, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese.^[8]

From the 19th century the name spread to other vessels of the same shape: the dyer's vat (1805) and the upper part of the blast furnace (1932).^[5] In the 20th century chemistry named the indigo and anthraquinone dyes coloranti al tino (vat dyes).^[9][2]

Timeline

• 1284 – Tino appears in a Florentine account.^[5]
• 1374 – The diminutive tinello is recorded in a document from Monte Amiata.^[5]
• 1463 – Tinello is used for the servants' dining room.^[5]
• Before 1597 – Tinozza “low, wide tub” appears in Soderini.^[5]
• 1805 – The dyer's vat is first recorded.^[5]
• 1932 – The upper part of the blast furnace is called tino.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A vat: a large tub, usually of wooden staves bound with iron and shaped like a truncated cone, in which trodden grapes ferment, also used to store wine; now also of concrete or steel.^[7][9][12]
2. (industry) A vessel of similar shape used in other processes: in dyeing, in paper-making to macerate rags, in sulphur mines to set molten sulphur.^[7][9][13]
3. (metallurgy) The upper, cone-shaped part of a blast furnace, where ore and fuel are loaded.^[12][13][9]

Word family

• tinello
• tinozza
• tinaia

Related words

• Latin tīna
• French tine

Usage notes

Tino is also a rare name of the laurustinus (Viburnum tinus), more often called laurotino or alloro tino.^[7][2] This is a learned word from Latin tīnus, whose origin is uncertain.^[13][14] Colorante al tino and forno a tino are technical phrases.^[7][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
3. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3795
12. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 20, 1047