adacquare

Forms

adacquare (first-person singular present adàcquo, first-person singular past historic adacquài, past participle adacquàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Texts of the period also spell it Old Italian adaquare.^[2][3] Northern dialects have forms without the first vowel, such as Milanese and Bergamasque daquà.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin adaquō (“to supply with water”), a verb Pliny already uses of watering almond trees.^[4][5][2] GRADIT, Devoto–Oli and Treccani call the Latin verb Late Latin, and Wiktionary also files it under Late Latin.^[6][7][8][1] Devoto explains the Italian spelling with ⟨cqu⟩ as a cross with Italian acqua.^[9]

The Latin verb survives in almost every Romance language: Romanian adăpa, Old French aever, Old Occitan adagar, Spanish adaguar, Portuguese ougar and Friulian adagâ.^[4][10] Romanian has kept only the sense “to give animals water”.^[4] In Italy the popular type is found almost everywhere except Tuscany, and in each region it competes with other verbs, such as annaffiare in the centre and verbs formed with the prefix in- in the north and south.^[4]

adaquō is formed from ad- (“to”) and aquor (“to fetch water”), which is from Latin aqua (“water”).^[5][1] The deponent aquor itself survives as acquare and Sardinian abbare.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in Restoro d'Arezzo, 1282, where the verb means to give water to land or plants, to water.^[2][12][7] The LEI cites an even earlier southern Old Italian adaquare from before the 13th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was used chiefly of fields and plants, and by extension of a face wet with tears; it also meant to give animals water and to dilute wine with water.^[2] Fazio wrote di lagrime convien che ’l viso adacqui (“my face must be watered with tears”), and the Italian translation of Crescenzi's treatise on farming says that the olive tree should not be watered from springs or streams but prefers rain.^[3] Leonardo has water running through a garden to water the orange and citron trees, and Galileo wrote that clouds water the hay that the earth grows for horses.^[3]

The sense “to water down” is recorded from Leonardo in 1519 and lives on in several northern and southern dialects; a figurative sense “to temper, lessen” appears before 1603.^[4][13] In the Salento the verb still means to give animals water, a survival of the Latin sense that may owe something to a Greek verb with both meanings.^[4] Today the standard word for watering plants is annaffiare, and adacquare is rare: GRADIT marks it as low-frequency and Wiktionary as archaic or regional in its first sense.^[6][1]

Timeline

• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo uses adacquare of watering.^[2][12]
• 14th century – The Italian translations of Crescenzi and Palladio use it of watering gardens and trees.^[4][14]
• 1367 – GRADIT's date for the verb.^[6]
• 1519 – Leonardo uses it for diluting wine with water.^[4][12]
• Before 1603 – G. P. Maffei uses it figuratively, “to temper, lessen”.^[4]
• 1612 – The Crusca dictionary records adacquare.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, agriculture) To water or irrigate land or plants: Ogni sera bisogna adacquare i pomodori.^{[6][7][15][12][8]}
2. (transitive, uncommon) To dilute a liquid with water, to water down.^{[6][15][16][1]}
3. (transitive, archaic) To give animals water to drink; the same as abbeverare.^{[6][7][15][8]}
4. (figurative) To temper, moderate or lessen.^[13]

Word family

• adacquamento
• adacquatura
• adacquata
• adacquatore

Related words

• acqua
• acquare
• annacquare
• annaffiare
• Latin adaquō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 1, 144
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 1, 615
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
11. ^ Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 597
12. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
14. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 22
15. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)