farfalla.

Perhaps from Old Italian parpaglione, from Latin papiliō (“butterfly”). Compare Old French paveillon, Catalan papalló, Provençal parpalhos, Lombard parpaja. The f is difficult to account for, though it might be due to the Tuscan gorgia. Alternatively, from the dialectal Arabic word in Maltese farfett, Tunisian Arabic فرططو (farṭaṭṭu) / فرفطو (farfaṭṭu), which is from Berber; compare Kabyle aferṭeṭṭu (“butterfly, moth”). Forms with a second -f- are apparently attested within Berber as well, but are at any rate explainable. For the -ll-, the Arabic emphatic [tˤ] could easily have been interpreted by southern Italians as their retroflex [ɖ] and then replaced with the cognate [l] as the word moved northwards (compare Sicilian beddu versus Italian bello).