torbido

Forms

torbido (feminine torbida, masculine plural torbidi, feminine plural torbide)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian turbido, Old Italian torbedo and Old Italian torpido.^[2][3][4] Lombard dialects have torbi.^[5][6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin turbidus (“disordered, stormy; murky”), from turba (“commotion, confusion”).^{[7][4][8][9][1]} DELI and GRADIT link it to the verb turbō (“to agitate”).^[10][11] The same word is Spanish turbio and Portuguese turvo.^[7][5]

Wiktionary takes turba probably from Ancient Greek τύρβη (túrbē, “tumult, disorder”).^[1] De Vaan finds the Greek word the closest match too, and doubts the old link with a Sanskrit verb meaning “to hurry”.^[12]

In the plural sense “riots” DELI sees the influence of French troubles, recorded in French from 1468, which comes from the verb Late Latin turbulāre.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Zucchero Bencivenni in 1310, for a liquid that is impure and not clear, and Dante, writing between 1300 and 1313, has the torbide onde: Già venia su per le torbide onde / un fracasso d'un suon, pien di spavento, “and now there came over the murky waves a crash of sound, full of dread”.^[10][2]

Semantic evolution

Latin turbidus meant “disordered, stormy, violent” and spoke mainly of the sky and the weather, and only secondarily of water.^[10] Medieval Italian soon passed from the cause, movement, to its effect, so that the commonest sense became “opaque, muddy”, of water that is not clear, although Dante's two uses stay close to the Latin.^[10]

The figurative sense “not serene or honest” is in Petrarch in 1374.^[10] The noun followed: il torbido, a murky or dishonest state of affairs, from Segneri in 1686, and i torbidi, the beginnings of a revolt, from the late 17th century, with a singular in a Venetian ambassador's report of 1573.^[10] Lissoni proscribed torbidi in 1831, and Ugolini (1855) and Viani (1860) defended it.^[10] Leonardo uses torbida for river water clouded by sediment, and Galileo for the sediment itself.^[10][13]

Timeline

• 1300–1313 – Dante writes of the torbide onde.^[10][2]
• 1310 – Zucchero Bencivenni uses torbido of a cloudy liquid.^[10]
• 1374 – Petrarch uses it figuratively, “not serene”.^[10]
• Before 1519 – Leonardo da Vinci uses torbida.^[10]
• 1573 – A Venetian ambassador uses torbido for an uprising.^[10]
• 1686 – Segneri uses the noun torbido for a dishonest situation.^[10]
• 1699 – Torbidi, “tumults”, appears in Corsini.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a liquid, cloudy, turbid, holding impurities in suspension: un'acqua di stagno torbida.^{[11][8][4][1]}
2. (literary) Dark, gloomy, of the sky or the air.^[8][3][14]
3. (figurative) Morally impure, equivocal: of thoughts, passions, a look.^[11][8][4]
4. (figurative) Restless, troubled: of sleep, or of times of unrest.^[11][3][15]
5. (literary) Of a person, violent, turbulent.^[11][8]

Noun

1. (singular only) Something shady or dishonest: c'è del torbido, there is something fishy.^[11][8][4]
2. pescare nel torbido: to fish in troubled waters, to profit from confusion.^[3][15][14]
3. (plural, dated) Riots, disturbances, political unrest.^{[11][8][4][3]}

Word family

• torbida
• torbidezza
• torbidità
• intorbidare
• torbidamente
• torbidiccio

Related words

• turbare
• turba
• Latin turbidus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 21
3. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana