On Thu, 27 Nov 2008, Miles Vaches wrote:

Regatta, from Venetian dialect, it originally signified any kind of
contest.

I may just repeat what I said a while ago (april 2008) in another thread
on r.t.e. As a native speaker of Italian, a language where double
consonants are significant, I'm always puzzled by the fact in English
you write "regatta" with 2 t's, while in Italian we write "regata" with
one t.

The reference to Venetian does not help, because Venetian is very
well known for its trend to REMOVE doubles present in the corresponding
italian word. They do not pronounce (nor write) doubles at all.

The enquiries I did in april showed that "regata" derives from Latin
"re-captare" i.e. "to catch again" or "to CAPTure again". Now the Latin
nexus -pt- renders in Italian as -tt- (compare Latin "captivus" with
e.g. English "captive" or Italian "cattivo" ... which however means
"bad, nasty" not "prisoner" ... from "captivus diaboli", "prisoner of
the devil"). So one could imagine an hypothetic italian *recattare from
recaptare (with participle "recapta", irregular). In Venetian the c
becomes g, and the double is systematically eliminated. Hence "regata".

It would be interesting to know when the word was imported in English.
In Venetian it should be documented at least from the XIII century.

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