An Influential Latin Dictionary and Its Etymologies (12th Century CE) in the Linguistic Landscape of Medieval Europe

The bestselling dictionary of the late Middle Ages was named after a morphological procedure, “derivations.” It was written by Hugutio (also known as Uguccione) from Pisa, bishop of Ferrara, probably in the 1160s, and its title refers to one of the procedures used in order to explain the origin and meaning of words. In addition, etymological speculation, with the method inherited from Latin Antiquity—from Varro via Isidore of Seville—also has a prominent place in this work, which enjoyed great success. In an epoch when the Romance languages, including Italian, had long ousted Latin in everyday native spoken usage, Hugutio’s book was extensively used and cited as a dictionary, in order to write not only in Latin—still the main language of culture in Western Europe for centuries to come—but also in the vernaculars in the then-incipient Romance vulgar literature; for example, by no less a figure than Dante Alighieri. To us, Hugutio’s Derivations (Derivationes) is valuable as a source both of knowledge of Medieval culture and thought and of information on the Italian lexicon, at a time when written documentation in Italian was still very scarce.