tondere

Forms

tondere (first-person singular present tóndo, first-person singular past historic tondétti or (traditional) tondètti or tondéi, past participle tondùto or tónso, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tondĕre, the Late Latin form of Latin tondēre (“to shear, clip”), which moved from the second to the third conjugation.^[2][3][4][5] Zingarelli and the GDLI call it a learned word.^[6][7] DEI notes that the verb is found across Romance and was partly crossed with Latin tundō (“to beat”).^[2]

The same verb gave Sardinian tundere, Romanian tunde, French tondre, Occitan tondre and Spanish tundir, “to shear cloth”.^[8] In Italian the everyday verb is tosare, from a spoken Vulgar Latin *tonsāre formed on the participle tōnsus, which replaced the classical verb.^[9] DELI notes that the senses of the Latin verb survive in Italian.^[9][8]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *tond-eje- and a causative Proto-Indo-European *tond-eie- “to shear”, with cognates in Old Irish teinnid (“to break, cut”) and Ancient Greek τένδω (téndō, “to gnaw at”).^[10] He finds the link of the root Proto-Indo-European *tend- with Proto-Indo-European *temh₁- (“to cut”) suggested by the meaning but not provable.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur, from the last quarter of the 12th century, with the sense “to cut or shave the hair or beard”.^[4] Tuscan texts follow with a Florentine translation of Albertano in 1275 and a Sienese document of 1277–82.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was used for shearing sheep, as in Bonvesin's Milanese E' tond lana mazenga (“he shears the May wool”), for cutting hair and beard, for the clerical tonsure, for pruning and mowing, for grazing, for shearing the nap of cloth, and for fraudulently clipping coins.^[4] Perugian and Gubbio texts of the 14th century show an infinitive tondire.^[4] Boccaccio uses it in the Decameron tale whose heading says “the shorn man shears all the others” (Il tonduto tutti gli altri tonde).^[12]

DEI dates the sense “to prune off superfluous branches” to 1531, in Roseo.^[2] Later the verb became literary and archaic, and it lives on in writers such as Carducci, who has a reaper that tonde la messe profonda.^[3][13]

Timeline

• Last quarter of the 12th century – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur uses tondere for cutting hair.^[4]
• 1275 – A Florentine translation of Albertano uses the verb.^[4]
• 1342 – A Perugian statute has the infinitive tondire.^[4]
• 1531 – Roseo uses it for pruning.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (archaic, literary) To shear an animal; to cut a person's hair or beard.^[3][14][5]
2. (by extension, literary) To prune vines or other plants; to mow grass.^[3][14][5]
3. (literary) To graze.^[3][14][15]
4. (obsolete) To clip a coin.^[3][15][4]

Word family

• tonditore
• tonditura

Related words

• tosare
• tonsura
• tonsore
• Latin tondeō
• French tondre

Usage notes

The past participle is tonduto or tonso, and the past historic tondei or tondetti.^[13][1]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3817
3. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
5. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
6. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
8. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
9. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
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. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)