tosare

Forms

tosare (first-person singular present tóso, first-person singular past historic tosài, past participle tosàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian texts have the forms tosa, tosada, tosata, tosavano and tosollo.^[2] The forms tugia and tugiati in the Tuscan translation of the Tesoro render the Old French verb.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *tōnsāre, a frequentative verb made on the past participle Latin tōnsus of classical tondeō (“to shear, to shave”), which it replaced.^[3][4][5][1] Battisti and Alessio compare dētōnsāre in Gellius, and Latin also had tōnsitāre (“to shear”) from Plautus on.^[6][7] The Vulgar Latin verb belongs to Italy and the western Romance area.^[6] The same word is Old French toser, Occitan tozar, Spanish tusar (with atusar) and Portuguese tosar.^[4][8]

Tondeō is from Proto-Italic *tondeō, and de Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *tond-eie- (“to shear”), with cognates in Old Irish teinnid (“breaks, cuts”) and Ancient Greek τένδω (téndō, “to gnaw at”).^[7] He notes that a link between the root Proto-Indo-European *tend- and *temh₁- (“to cut”) can't be proven, though the meaning points to it.^[7] Nocentini connects the verb with the root of Latin templum and τέμνω (témnō, “to cut”).^[4]

The classical verb had several senses that live on in Italian: cutting the beard, the hair or the grass, pruning trees, and figuratively stripping someone of his goods.^[3] The descendants of the Vulgar Latin verb are still far more common, also in the dialects, than those of the classical verb; in Umbria several types meet, beside the standard verb also tosorare, carosare, casorare and tondire.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a Sienese account book of 1277–1282, which pays a servant sent to Batignano “to shear” (per tosare).^[2] The Florentine translation of Brunetto Latini's Tesoro, from the end of the 13th century, tells the landowner to shear his sheep.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb meant above all cutting the wool of sheep, and soon also cutting a person's hair: the Bolognese commentary of Jacopo della Lana (1324–1328) says that Thaïs “sheared” Samson.^[2] Cavalca's sermon on the Creed (before 1342) uses the pastoral image “feed my sheep… feed, he said, not shear.”^[2]

The figurative sense “strip someone of money” is in Ariosto (1508), who has a character threaten to shear another “like a sheep”.^[3][9] Clipping the edge of gold and silver coins, a fraud, is recorded by about 1450.^[6] Pruning hedges and espaliers to an even surface follows in 1592, and cutting a person's hair very short in 1612.^[3] Tommaseo's examples include Buonarroti the Younger on men who fall into the barbers' scissors and are sheared “like sheep”.^[10]

The 20th century added the names of machines: tosatrice (1922), tosacani (1961), tosasiepi (1965) and tosaerba (1973).^[3][4]

Timeline

• 1277–1282 – A Sienese account book has tosare for shearing sheep.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini's Tesoro in Italian uses the verb.^[3][2]
• 1324–1328 – Jacopo della Lana uses it for cutting a person's hair.^[2]
• c. 1450 – Clipping coins is recorded.^[6]
• 1508 – Ariosto uses the figurative sense “to fleece”.^[3]
• 1592 – M. Roseo uses it for trimming hedges and ornamental plants.^[3]
• 1598 – Florio records tosatore and tosatura.^[3]
• 1612 – Buonarroti the Younger uses it for cutting someone's hair.^[3]
• 1922 – Tosatrice, a clipping machine, enters the Zingarelli dictionary.^[3]
• 1973 – Tosaerba, a lawnmower, is first recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To shear sheep for their wool; to clip or trim the coat of a long-haired animal: In maggio si tosano le pecore.^[5][11][12]
2. (jocular) To cut someone's hair very short, to crop.^[5][11][12]
3. To trim hedges, espaliers or ornamental plants to an even surface or a regular shape.^[5][11][12]
4. To mow a lawn or a meadow short.^[5][9]
5. (rare) To trim the edges of the pages of a book being bound, the same as rifilare.^[5][13][9]
6. (historical) To clip gold or silver coins, filing metal from their rim as a fraud.^[5][13][9]
7. (dated) To shave fresh cheese with a wire, taking a little from each form.^[5][11][9]
8. (figurative, colloquial) To fleece someone with heavy taxes, high prices or interest, the same as pelare.^[5][11][12]
9. (jocular, pronominal: tosarsi) To have one's hair cut very short.^[11][12][14]

Word family

• tosatore
• tosatrice
• tosatura
• tosacani
• tosaerba
• tosasiepi
• tosamento
• ritosare

Related words

• tondere
• tonsura
• tonsore
• toso
• tosone
• Latin tondeō

Usage notes

The ⟨s⟩ is voiced, /z/.^[15][1] The phrase tosare come una pecora “to shear like a sheep” is the full form of the figurative sense.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3838
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
9. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
15. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti