mandolino

Mandolino is the diminutive of mandola, itself from mandorla (almond). The word names a small stringed instrument with a rounded, almond-shaped body and paired metal strings played with a plectrum. The instrument evolved in 17th-century Italy from the earlier mandora and mandola, which were themselves descendants of medieval lutes. The mandolin is a lute that shrank, acquired metal strings, and got a new name based on its shape.

The Neapolitan mandolin — the version most familiar today, with its deep, rounded back and eight metal strings in four courses — was developed in the mid-18th century by the Vinaccia family of Naples. Pasquale Vinaccia standardized the design around 1744. The instrument became associated with Naples and, by extension, with all of southern Italy. Mandolin music and Neapolitan songs became interchangeable in the popular imagination.

The mandolin crossed the Atlantic with Italian immigrants. In the 1880s–1900s, a mandolin craze swept the United States. Mandolin clubs formed in universities and cities. Gibson's Orville Gibson began designing flat-backed mandolins in the 1890s, and Lloyd Loar designed the F-5 mandolin at Gibson in 1922 — the instrument that Bill Monroe would use to invent bluegrass music. The almond from Naples became the sound of Appalachia.

The word mandolin entered English from Italian in the 18th century. The French form mandoline also exists (and names a kitchen slicer, for the same almond-shape reason). The instrument carries Italian in its name, American in its modern identity, and almond in its etymology.