tratturo

Forms

tratturo m (plural tratturi)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Neapolitan tratture, the word of the dialects of Abruzzo and Apulia, written with a final ⟨-ë⟩ in GRADIT.^[2][3][1][4] The dialect word comes from Latin tractōrius (“concerned with pulling or hoisting”), probably through a phrase with iter (“way”) meaning “traced path”.^[5][6][7] Zingarelli calls the allusion in the name debated, and Nocentini reads the adjective as “belonging to the route”, from tractus (“drawing, trail, track”) in the sense of a course traced on the ground.^[8][2]

Medieval Latin documents have related forms: Medieval Latin tractorarium in the Codex Cavensis in 1016, and tracturus, a sunken road or ditch, at Cervia in 1328 and in Romagna (Forlì, Faenza, Ravenna, Cesena) in the 14th to 16th centuries.^[9][10] Devoto points out the southern treatment of the Latin ending ⟨-orium⟩ as ⟨-uro⟩;^[7] Tuscan would have given ⟨-oio⟩, as in trattoio, a funnel.^[7]

The same Latin adjective lives on with other senses in Venetian tratora, a layer for propagating vines, and in French traitoire, forceps for pulling teeth.^[11] Tractōrius is formed from trahō (“to pull, drag, haul”) with the suffix -tōrius, the verb of Italian trarre.^[12][1][2] De Vaan traces trahō to a Proto-Italic stem with no secure cognates outside Celtic.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first Italian record is from the end of the 17th century, in A. Gaudiani, with the sense of a natural path worn by the passing of flocks.^[14] GRADIT and Nocentini date it to the second half of the 17th century.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The word belongs to the transhumance of southern Italy: the broad grassy tracks on which flocks moved each season between the Apennine pastures of Abruzzo and the plains of Apulia and Calabria.^[10][6] It entered literary Italian with Gabriele D'Annunzio in 1894,^[14] and his verse E vanno pel tratturo antico al piano (“and they go down the ancient drove road to the plain”) made it widely known.^[4][10]

GRADIT also gives the word for a fixed fishing installation in fresh water, a bag net with two long wings;^[3][10] Treccani lists this sense as a separate word, perhaps related to the first.^[3][10]

Timeline

• 1016 – Medieval Latin tractorarium appears in the Codex Cavensis.^[9]
• 1328 – Medieval Latin tracturus “sunken road, ditch” is recorded at Cervia.^[9]
• Late 17th century – A. Gaudiani uses tratturo for a path worn by flocks.^[14]
• 1894 – Gabriele D'Annunzio brings the word into literature.^[14]
• 1931 – The word is recorded as a term of geography.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A broad grassy or stony track worn by flocks and herds moving between pastures in their seasonal transhumance, especially in Abruzzo and Apulia; a drove road.^{[3][4][5][10]}
2. (fishing) A fixed fishing installation in fresh water: a bag net with two wings four to eight metres long and two metres high.^[3][10]

Related words

• trarre
• tratto
• Latin tractōrius

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
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 Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
7. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3874
10. ^ a b c d e f g Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ a b c d Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli