zappa

Forms

zappa f (plural zappe)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian çappa, Old Italian zapa, Old Italian czappa and, with s-, Old Italian sappa and Old Italian sapa.^[2] The northern form with s- survives as Venetian and Friulian sapa.^[3]

Etymology

The origin is disputed.^[4][2] DELI and Nocentini prefer a formation from Italian zappo (“billy goat”), recorded as Medieval Latin zappus in 1366: the two-pronged hoe was named after the horned animal, as Latin capreolus (“little goat”) came to mean a two-pronged hoe.^[4][5] The goat word lives on in the dialects of the Abruzzo and in Romanian țap (“billy goat”).^[5][6] Its own origin is unknown: Rohlfs, followed by Hubschmid, took it for a call used to summon goats.^[4][5][6]

Meyer-Lübke started from an Illyrian word for “billy goat”, from which Romanian sapă (“hoe”) and the Italian word would come by the same comparison of the blades with the horns, a use found in Italy since the 8th century.^[6] The DEI found such an Illyrian base unnecessary and preferred the opposite development, from the two-horned tool to the goat.^[3]

GRADIT, Devoto–Oli, Sabatini–Coletti and Wiktionary instead start from Late Latin sappa, a Late Latin word for a kind of mattock found in glossaries, of uncertain or pre-Latin origin.^[7][8][9][1] Devoto took it for a Mediterranean word that survived in the north and came into Tuscan with z- for s-.^[10][4] Hubschmid placed it in a long series of words from an old root meaning “to beat the earth, to hoe”.^[4] Older proposals linked it with Ancient Greek σκάπτω (skáptō, “to dig”) (Menagio, Diez).^[11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first Italian record is a Sienese document of 1221;^[2][5][4] DELI's first literary use is by Guittone d'Arezzo, before 1294, and Medieval Latin texts have the word earlier.^[2][5][4] The sense is the farm tool: a metal blade fixed at an angle to a long wooden handle, used to break up and turn the soil.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the hoe stood for farm work, or for work in general, and was sometimes used as a weapon.^[2] Dante's Convivio calls it a blameworthy act to make a hoe out of a fine sword, and Boccaccio's Decameron sets la zappa e la vanga against the desires of the peasants.^[11] The verb zappare is as old as the noun (a Veronese çapare early in the 13th century), and zappatore was a hoer from the 14th century and a soldier who dug fortifications from 1593 (Galileo).^[4]

From that military work came the sense of a narrow trench dug close to enemy fortifications during a siege, used until the 19th century.^[13][7] Around Monte Amiata and Grosseto zappa was also a land measure, as much ground as one man could hoe in a day.^[3] Popular speech calls the figure seven zappa from its shape, and in Piedmont a net for lampreys has the name.^[7][14]

Italian lent the word to Byzantine Greek τσάπα and to Ottoman Turkish, the source of Turkish çapa.^[1] Meyer-Lübke derived French sape from it as well, while the DEI treats the French word as a parallel form that kept the s-.^[6][3]

Timeline

• 1221 – A Sienese document has the first Italian record.^[2][5]
• Early 13th century – Veronese çapare “to hoe” is recorded.^[4]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses zappa and zappare.^[4]
• 1366 – Medieval Latin zappus “billy goat” is recorded.^[4]
• 1593 – Galileo uses zappatore for a soldier who digs fortifications.^[4]
• 1961 – Zappatrice, a motor hoe, enters the dictionaries.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A hoe: a farm tool with a flat blade, usually trapezoidal or triangular, fixed almost at a right angle to a wooden handle, used to break up clods, level the ground and make furrows: Il contadino rompeva le zolle con la zappa.^[7][8][9]
2. (military, historical) A sap: a low, narrow trench dug near the enemy's fortifications during a siege.^{[7][8][9][13]}
3. (regional, Piedmont) A net for catching lampreys.^[7][8][13]
4. (popular) The number seven, from the shape of the figure.^[7][13]
5. (figurative, slang) An incompetent or ignorant person.^[8]

Word family

• zappare
• zappata
• zappaterra
• zappatore
• zappatrice
• zappatura
• zappetta
• zappettare
• zappone

Related words

• Late Latin sappa
• French sape

Usage notes

Darsi la zappa sui piedi “to hit one's own feet with the hoe” means to harm oneself, usually by contradicting oneself or using arguments that turn against oneself.^[8][14][13] A zappa meccanica is a motor hoe (zappatrice).^[8][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 4108
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
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. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
13. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)