Etymology: < Italian (originally regional: Venice) Ghetto, the name of a locality in the Cannaregio district of Venice where Jews were legally required to live by an act of 1516 (see below; 1571 or earlier in extended use with reference to similar areas reserved for Jews in other cities), apparently < an unattested Italian regional (Venice) *gheto foundry (see below) < post-classical Latin iectus , variant of iactus foundry (1295 in a Venetian source referring to the locality), specific sense of classical Latin iactus act of throwing, casting < iact- , past participial stem of iacere to throw (see jactation n.) + -tus, suffix forming verbal nouns. With the posited Italian regional (Venice) form *gheto foundry, compare post-classical Latin ghetus, gethus, gettus, getus in this sense (from 1306 in Venetian sources referring to the locality), and (with initial /dʒ-/) Italian getto the process, craft, or industry of founding or casting metal (14th cent.). The Venetian legislation of 1516 was a response to the large influx of Jewish refugees from the mainland to the city during the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–16). The locality known as il Ghetto was previously the site of a large state foundry (principally for copper smelting) in the 13th and 14th centuries; its name is recorded variously in Venetian sources from the mid 15th to the 18th centuries as Geto, Getto, Gheto, Ghetto, Getho, always pronounced with initial velar /ɡ-/ (a reflex of classical Latin initial /j-/ which is apparently paralleled in certain northern Venetian dialects, although why it should have been adopted in metropolitan speech in this one word has not been adequately explained).Compare Middle French guetto , French ghetto (1536 with reference to Venice; 1690 with reference to similar areas reserved for Jews in other cities), German Getto (1627 with reference to Ancona; also Ghetto ). Compare also post-classical Latin ghectus (1562 in an isolated attestation in a bull of Pope Paul IV with reference to Rome). Alternative derivations of Italian ghetto. Although frequently cited (and of some antiquity, having been first suggested in the 17th cent.), derivation of Italian ghetto from Hebrew gēṭ letter of divorce (see get n.³; because the ghetto separated Jews from the rest of the population) is no more than a folk etymology. It is telling that the usual Hebrew word for ‘ghetto’ among Italian Jews (including those of Venice) in the 16th cent is the unrelated ḥāṣēr , literally ‘courtyard’. (The Italian form ghet (1589; also ghette , gette ), occasionally attested (beside ghetto , getto ) in Jewish notarial documents (especially from Rome) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, is itself evidently a folk-etymological alteration of ghetto after Hebrew gēṭ .) Other alternative suggestions, e.g. that the word developed as a shortening of Egitto Egypt (see Egyptian adj. and n.) or of borghetto small place of residence ( < borgo borough n. + -etto -et suffix¹), are even less likely and lack any supporting evidence.

Etymology: < ghetto n.