baccalà

Italian

Etymology

From Dutch bakaliaw, of uncertain origin. Possibly from Latin baculum (“stick, staff”), referring to the way cod were split and dried on wooden sticks.

If the element *bak- is a metathesis of *kab- (compare French cabillaud and German Kabeljau from Dutch kabeljauw), then the original form of the word could have been *cabalao, maybe meaning "large-headed fish" (cf. Ibero-Romance words, such as Spanish cabo, cabal, from Latin caput (“head”)). (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

Cognate to Catalan bacallà, Portuguese bacalhau, Spanish bacalao.

Noun

baccalà m (uncountable)

1. salt cod, stockfish
2. (figuratively) a foolish person

References

• Roberts, Edward A. (2014) A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language with Families of Words based on Indo-European Roots, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN