On Famous Women

— XIV —

ancient examples of wit and pleasantness original: "lepore" and "lepidezza" are found—words introduced later—and that all the manuscripts of Albanzani’s vernacular translation contain either well-mannered words or refined speech, then one must conclude that the word wit original: "lepore" was coined by Father Tosti. By his authority, it improperly entered the dictionaries of our language, using the example attributed to Albanzani. And this is not the only word that, in the edition cited by the Crusca The Accademia della Crusca, the primary institution for the study and preservation of the Italian language, had an equal or similar origin, and which has been welcomed with open arms by lexicographers. I have noted several others, though not all, as tracing them all down in detail would require a great expenditure of time in most patient comparisons. One of the words thus coined is weaving-room original: "tessoria," a term for a weaver's shop or the art of weaving, which I find accepted in the Turin Dictionary with the example from page 46, taken from the chapter on Arachne of Asia, who in Colophon An ancient city in Greek Ionia had her weaving-room. The little cross A typographical mark (+) used in dictionaries to denote obsolete or archaic words, an indication of an archaic word which precedes it, is not enough to excuse it, because tessoria is an error in place of tesseria the standard word for a weaving workshop, which I read in all the manuscripts I have seen, and which is a natural derivation from to weave original: "tessere". The same may be said of to unweave original: "ditessere", also accepted in that Dictionary with the example on page 99 regarding Penelope, who

“unwove original: "ditesseva" by night secretly everything she had woven by day.”

The two Turin manuscripts have undid by night, and the Florentine manuscript, of which I shall speak after having con-