Contatti linguistici lungo le coste tirreniche: storia della parola marruffo

Abstract

Abstract The article intends to reconstruct the linguistic history of a particular fishing gear called marruffo, which is still used in the Gulf of Naples and in a few places of the North Tyrrhenian coasts. The marruffo is a fishing trap used by fishermen to preserve the catch while awaiting sale. Conical in shape, it looks like a large basket with a lid, in which fish or crustaceans of various types are placed. Starting from the 1871 work by the naturalist Achille Costa, entitled La pesca nel golfo di Napoli, the attestations of marruffo in Campania, Sardinia and Corsica are outlined. I put forward the hypothesis that the object arrived on the Tyrrhenian coasts as a consequence of migrations of fishermen from the Neapolitan area to the islands of Tuscany, Sardinia and Corsica between the 18th and 19th century. Since in southern Italy the name marruffo also indicates a jug for wine or water, I hypothesize that the word was extended from the lexicon of everyday life to the fishing lexicon throughout a process of resemantization, as it was demonstrated for other similar cases.