Noun: farfalla
Gender: f
Hyphenation: far‧fàl‧la
| Singular f | farfalla |
| Plural f | farfalle |
Sample Sentences
Nouns inflected like farfalla
monferrina,
ossichinolina,
palestra,
nipoteria,
gualdrappa,
bacinella,
minicassetta,
bestemmia,
geostoria,
sferra,
sferza,
sfilza,
triplofonia,
fiduciaria,
meteoroscopia,
ipersonnia,
sovrabbondanza,
corbezzola,
pseudoestesia,
viminata, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Perhaps from Old Italian parpaglione, from Latin papiliō (“butterfly”). Compare Old French paveillon, Catalan papalló, Provençal parpalhos, Lombard parpaja. The f is difficult to account for, though it might be due to the Tuscan gorgia.
2. Alternatively, from the dialectal Arabic word in Maltese farfett, Tunisian Arabic فرططو (farṭaṭṭu) / فرفطو (farfaṭṭu), which is from Berber; compare Kabyle aferṭeṭṭu (“butterfly, moth”). Forms with a second -f- are apparently attested within Berber as well, but are at any rate explainable. For the -ll-, the Arabic emphatic [tˤ] could easily have been interpreted by southern Italians as their retroflex [ɖ] and then replaced with the cognate [l] as the word moved northwards (compare Sicilian beddu versus Italian bello). See: Latin Nouns '
papiliō', Catalan Nouns '
papalló'.
Translations