tramoggia

Forms

tramoggia f (plural tramogge)^[1] Old Italian forms include tramogia, tremoggia and trimoggia.^[2] Old Modenese had tremoza (1327), and Pisan and Lucchese have tremòggia.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin trimodia (“a vessel holding three modii”), a Latin word used by Varro, properly “holding three measures”, from tri- (“three”) and modius (“modius, a dry measure of grain”).^{[4][5][6][7][3]} In Latin it already named the hopper of a mill as well as the vessel.^[8][5] It was formed like the other Latin words that give a quantity in modii, such as semodius (“half a modius”), sesquimodius (“a modius and a half”) and decemmodius (“ten modii”).^[4]

The word belongs to Italy and the western Romance languages: French trémie, Occitan tremueia, Catalan tremuja, Spanish tramoya and Portuguese tremonha, and Sursilvan termoia.^[5][8][3] The regional Latin word also passed into the Byzantine Greek of Calabria, and its descendants survive in the Greek dialect of Bova and in southern Calabrian.^[3] Devoto explains the first syllable ⟨tra-⟩ as a crossing with the Italian prefix tra-.^[9]

DELI calls this etymology traditional and well settled.^[4] Corominas nevertheless asked why the vessel should hold three modii and not some other number, and revived an old proposal of Diez that linked the first part to tremō (“to tremble”), for the constant shaking of the hopper;^[4][10] Wartburg rejected this firmly in 1959.^[4][10] H. and R. Kahane (1967) proposed a compromise, giving the second element here the sense it has in the vocabulary of hydraulics, a pipe that regulates or measures the outflow of water.^[4][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a Siena statute of 1309–1310, which orders that the mill's grain measures sieno et stare debiano appesi a le tramogia con buone catene di ferro (“must hang from the hoppers on good iron chains”).^[2] The sense was the box shaped like a square funnel, set over the millstone, that held the grain to be ground.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Bindo Bonichi of Siena, before 1338, compared conscience to the mill's trimoggia, which is larga … di sopra, d'altra parte … stretta (“wide at the top and narrow at the other end”): each man keeps the wide end for himself and gives the narrow one to his neighbour.^[2][10] DELI dates the word from F. Sacchetti (before 1400), in whose story a miller's boy is told never to leave the millstone or the hopper.^[4][11] The hopper also fed the bolting sieve that sifted the flour.^[10][11]

From the mill the word spread to any device that receives loose material from above and lets it out below: Florio used it in 1563 for ore, and modern technical language has hoppers on kilns, presses, silos and dredges, the stiva a tramoggia of ships that drop their load through the bottom, and the carro tramoggia, a wagon that unloads directly.^[3][12][6] A finestra a tramoggia, recorded from 1879, is a window shielded on the outside so that it shows only the sky, used in prisons and enclosed convents.^[3][12] At the Accademia della Crusca the tramoggia was the box in which the literary works to be examined were put, in keeping with the academy's milling imagery.^[6][13][12] In crystallography the word names a hopper crystal, whose faces are hollowed into stepped pyramids.^[12][1]

Timeline

• 1309–1310 – A Siena statute records tramogia for the hoppers of a mill.^[2]
• Before 1338 – Bindo Bonichi writes trimoggia in a sonnet.^[2][14]
• Before 1400 – F. Sacchetti uses tramoggia.^[4]
• 1563 – Florio uses the word for a hopper of ore.^[3]
• 1879 – Finestra a tramoggia is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (technology) A hopper: a container shaped like an upside-down truncated pyramid or cone, open at the bottom, that receives loose material from above and lets it fall into a mill, kiln, machine or other container: la tramoggia del mulino.^{[6][13][14][12]}
2. By extension, the bowl of a coffee grinder that holds the beans.^[6]
3. (nautical) A hold that opens at the bottom, used to dump dredged material or waste into the sea: stiva a tramoggia.^{[6][13][12][15]}
4. (architecture) In finestra a tramoggia, a window screened on the outside so that it lets in light but shows only the sky, used in prisons and enclosed convents.^[14][12][15]
5. (history) At the Accademia della Crusca, the box where literary works waiting to be examined were placed.^{[6][13][16][14]}
6. (crystallography) A hopper crystal, with faces hollowed in stepped pyramids.^[12][1]

Word family

• tramoggiaio
• tramoggiato

Related words

• moggio
• tre
• Latin modius

Usage notes

The plural is tramogge, rarely tramoggie.^[12][13] After a noun it is used as an invariable adjective in carro tramoggia and barca tramoggia, a vessel fitted with hopper holds.^[14][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3859
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 449
10. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 21, 153
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
16. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse