adunare

Forms

adunare (first-person singular present adùno, first-person singular past historic adunài, past participle adunàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old forms are Old Italian aunare and Old Italian agunare.^[2][3][4] Old Venetian has Old Italian assunare and asunar.^[5][6]

Etymology

It is a learned word: it is borrowed from Late Latin adūnāre (“to unite, gather”), formed from ūnus (“one”) with the strengthening prefix ad-.^[7][8][9][1] The Latin verb meant “to unite, make one”.^[1][10]

The Latin verb lived on in Old French aüner (about 1120), Old Occitan aünar, Catalan aunar, Spanish aunar and Portuguese aunar, and in Romanian aduna.^[5][6][9] In Italy it survives in the popular forms that lost the -d- between vowels: Old Italian aunare, and Old Italian agunare, with a -g- inserted to break the hiatus as in ⟨Pagolo⟩ for ⟨Paolo⟩.^[5][3] The LEI rejects Salvioni's view that these forms were taken from aüner, and the Venetian type assunar, from the 14th and 15th centuries, it explains with a prefix ex- in place of ad-.^[5] The standard form, with its -d-, could be a popular form that kept the consonant in Tuscany and the south, but the LEI groups it with the learned forms of the western languages, Old French aduner and Spanish adunar, as DELI does.^[5][7]

Latin ūnus goes back to Proto-Italic *oino- and Proto-Indo-European *Hoi-no- (“one”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Ritmo di sant'Alessio, a poem from the Marche of the late 12th century.^[12] The Judeo-Italian Elegy of the 12th or 13th century has both “to bring together” and the reflexive “to meet, gather”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian it meant to call people together for a purpose, to gather in one place, and to bring together what was divided.^[12] Latini's Rettorica uses it for joining words to the subject of a speech, and Ristoro has the popular aunare for the smith who forges iron together.^[10] Dante uses it figuratively: Vano pensiero aduni (“you gather an idle thought”).^[10]

The reflexive adunarsi was early and stays common, for people who meet in a place.^[7][2] The prefixed radunare is also of the 13th century.^[9] The noun adunata, first a gathering of people or things, took the sense “muster of troops” by 1892, and Benito Mussolini chose it for a meeting he called on 23 March 1919; it then named the mass rallies of political and paramilitary organizations.^[7]

In literary use it can also mean, of things, “to contain, combine in itself”.^[8][13][2]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – The Ritmo di sant'Alessio (Marche) has the verb.^[12]
• 12th–13th century – The Judeo-Italian Elegy uses it for “to gather” and reflexively “to meet”.^[7]
• 1298 – Nocentini's date for the noun adunata, which DELI first finds before 1363 in Matteo Villani.^[9][7]
• Before 1306 – Iacopone da Todi has adunanza.^[7]
• 1838 – raduno is first recorded.^[9]
• 1892 – Adunata is recorded for a muster of troops.^[7]
• 1919 – Mussolini calls the meeting of 23 March an adunata.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To gather, assemble people or things, radunare: adunare i soci in assemblea.^{[8][13][3][2]}
2. (transitive, figurative) To combine, bring together in oneself: un carattere che aduna mille contraddizioni.^[8][3]
3. (transitive, literary) Of things: to contain, include.^[13][4][14]
4. (pronominal) To meet, come together in a place: la folla si adunò davanti al municipio.^[13][3][2]

Word family

• adunabile
• adunanza
• adunata
• radunare
• radunata
• raduno
• adunamento
• adunatore
• adunazione
• coadunare
• riadunare

Related words

• uno
• unire
• riunire
• Latin ūnus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
3. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
4. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 1, 867
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
9. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
13. ^ 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
14. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli