THE DICTIONARISTIC TRADITION IN ITALY AND THE TREATMENT OF LOANS FROM THE PORTUGUESE

The present essays shows that the Italian dictionaristic tradition started with the publishing of the first monolingual dictionary, edited by the Accademia della Crusca, in 1612, whose participants used to defend the purity of the Florentine language. The selection of vocabulary for this first dictionary has reflected the thought of an intellectual elite. In fact, this first edition does not display a single word from Portuguese, despite the frequent commercial and cultural contact that existed between the Portuguese people and several Italian states and republics.