Panettone: augmentative of the diminutive
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'Tis the season to savor panettone, a mildly sweet Italian bread.
It is made during a long process that involves curing the dough, which is acidic, similar to sourdough. The proofing process alone takes several days, giving the cake its distinctive fluffy characteristics.
(source)
It usually contains small amounts of fruit; the variety I'm eating this afternoon has cherries and chocolate pieces — extremely delicious.
Being the irremediable language buff that I am, I could not help but marvel at the construction of the name of this delicious bread:
You start with the word pane ("bread"), apply the diminutive, which yields panetto ("a small loaf of bread"). To that we add the augmentative suffix -one, which transforms the meaning to "[[large [little]] bread".
Wondrous are the ways of linguistic mutation and permutation.
Happy holiday nibbles, everyone!
Selected readings
- "Gastronationalism" (3/24/23)
- Neophilologica, 27 (2015), p. 225
S Frankel said,
December 21, 2024 @ 4:26 pm
It's the violoncello of breads! viola+ one [aug] + cello [dim]
Claudius said,
December 21, 2024 @ 9:18 pm
well, sorry for nitpicking, but the real diminutivo is -ino, not -etto,
(gatto gattino,spaghetti spaghettini)
what we have with -etto the italians call a "vezzeggiativo"
"Il vezzeggiativo altera il nome primitivo in modo da creare una sensazione dolce e affettuosa, simpatico, e somiglia un po' al diminutivo."
"The vezzeggiative alters the primitive noun so as to create a sweet and affectionate, sympathetic feeling, and somewhat resembles the diminutive."
we also have something of bouba/kika phenomen with
-i (-ino) a "smaller" vowel (vowel with the smaller "mouthvolume",is there a better word for that?) and -o- (-one Accrescitivo), a vowel with a bigger "mouthvolume"
miramarco said,
December 22, 2024 @ 3:25 am
You can also buy small panettoni, made to be enjoyed by one person, especially a child, and they’re called panettoncini – the diminutive of the augmentative of the diminutive!
(Also, other Italians may point out that legend says that “panettone” comes from “pan de Toni”, from the name of its alleged inventor – but that’s a legend as far as I know.)
Robert Coren said,
December 22, 2024 @ 10:28 am
@S Frankel: I too was going to mention violoncello, one of my favorite Italian words. (Which always leads me off on a tangent about the names of the members of the viol/violin family, including the German word for the viola: Bratsche, which I only realized fairly late in life comes from Italian viola da braccia = "arm viol".)
M. Paul Shore said,
December 22, 2024 @ 2:00 pm
Claudius: As far as I know, the best English equivalent of vezzeggiativo would be the linguistic term "hypocoristic".
A somewhat similar case to the ones being discussed here is the toponym "Massachusetts", originally formed as an English plural of the ethnonym "Massachusett", the latter being a name that–without our getting bogged down in details of Massachusett-Narragansett-language orthographic, phonological, morphological, or dialectal precision (none of which I could comment reliably on anyway)–can be analyzed as mass(a)- "large" + -(w)adchu- "mountain, hill" + -(e)s- "[diminutive]" + -et "[locative]"–so all in all, "at the large small mountain". (The reference is to the gentle-sloped Great Blue Hill in what are now the towns of Milton, Randolph, and Canton, not far from Boston; that hill is, incidentally, also commemorated in the call letters of the broadcasting stations WGBH-TV and WGBH-FM.)
Gokul Madhavan said,
December 22, 2024 @ 10:56 pm
Dear @M. Paul Shore:
Despite having lived in MA for over a decade, I must admit to my everlasting shame that, until reading your clarifying comment, I had never connected the name of the state Massachusetts with the name of the ski resort Wachusett Mountain. So I’m guessing that “Wachusett” means “at the small mountain”, which then introduces an element of redundancy into the ski resort’s name. Thank you!
Ryan said,
December 23, 2024 @ 3:44 am
It hadn’t occurred to me till now that tje first element in the word Massachusetts is cognate with the first element in Michigan.
Coby said,
December 23, 2024 @ 9:43 am
Fettuccine is the reverse: fetta = slice, fettuccia = big slice, fettuccina = little big slice.
M. Paul Shore said,
December 23, 2024 @ 12:41 pm
Coby: You'd think they could've left off both suffixes, and just let it be a fetta compli.
Victor Mair said,
December 23, 2024 @ 12:48 pm
From the Italian son-in-law of a friend:
So moist, rich and festive; the panettone is as “-one” as a bread can get. The diminutive should have never made it into the name.
Bob Ladd said,
December 23, 2024 @ 1:46 pm
@Claudius:
In languages that have diminutive morphology, it's usually difficult to separate out vezzeggiativo effects from diminutivo effects. Because Italian has such a rich and fairly productive set of such suffixes, it's tempting to think that -ino and -etto have identifiably different functions, but I'm skeptical. For one thing, there seems to be some phonological conditioning at work: my impression is that stems ending in coronal consonants, especially coronal obstruents, are more likely to take -ino and stems ending in labial/palatal/velar consonants are more likely to take -etto. Take the words for a handful of everyday objects and imagine a diminutive form for one that is smaller than normal and see what you get. I'm sure intuitions will vary somewhat, but try tazza, bottiglia, tavolo, sedia, and see if tazzina, bottiglietta, tavolino, and sedietta don't sound better than the alternatives. A different phonological effect is that stems ending in -on, whether it represents the augmentative suffix or not, routinely take -cino instead of -ino as the diminutive (camioncino, canzoncino, leoncino, bidoncino, etc.).
Robert Coren said,
December 24, 2024 @ 9:54 am
In a particularly obvious example of what Bob Ladd describes, in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni the title character at one point addresses the peasant girl Zerlina as "Zerlinetta"; "Zerlinina" would be notably infelicitous.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
December 27, 2024 @ 9:22 am
Don't forget the pejoratives (ragazzaccio, stronzaccio, ecc.)!
I've always been a little miffed at my first name _already_ being a "diminutive" in Italian — "Beniamino".
Thanks for the nostalgia, Prof! You give socks & wine to your friends, but you give a panettone to your cumpa'.
Robert Coren said,
December 27, 2024 @ 10:20 am
@Benjamin E. Orsatti:
Don't forget the pejoratives (ragazzaccio, stronzaccio, ecc.)!
Don Giovanni again: In his aria, Masetto calls Zerlina a "bricconaccia", which, considering that "briccona" is already not exactly a compliment…
a "diminutive" in Italian — "Beniamino"
Well, actually… Oh, never mind, you already knew that.
Henry Gehrenbeck said,
December 28, 2024 @ 12:45 am
If Panettone is the Violoncello of breads, perhaps Panettoncini are the Violoncelli Piccoli of breads.
Andrea Del Moro said,
December 28, 2024 @ 6:28 pm
“Panettone” is just a big “pane”: pane + one. Saying “panone” would sound awkward (and awful), so an extra sound was added between the stem and the suffix – something along the lines of what Bob Ladd mentioned earlier about diminutives.