Crudele ed amaroso amaro

Taking as a starting point an example of the Old Italian adjective amaroso "bitter" in a poem composed around 1277 by Guittone d'Arezzo, the author proceeds to a critical examination of the known occurrences of this word in medieval Italian texts, highlighting a number of cases of amoroso ("loving") and maroso ("billow"; "marsh") which might in fact be scribal errors for amaroso. Finally, seeing that the oldest example of the word occurs in a poem written in Italian in 1267 or 1268 by a member of the Castilian royal family, arguments in favour of a possible Ibero-Romance origin of amaroso are discussed.