agosto

Forms

agosto m (uncountable)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian aghosto, Old Italian agusto, Old Italian ogosto, Old Italian avosto and Old Italian aosto.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin agustus, the spoken form of Latin augustus, the month named in honour of Octavian Augustus in place of the older sextīlis.^[4][5][6][1] Sabatini–Coletti dates the new name to 8 BC.^[7] The first ⟨u⟩ was lost by dissimilation from the ⟨u⟩ of the following syllable; the form without it is found in Latin inscriptions from the first half of the 1st century AD.^[4][5][3][8] The Old Tuscan variant ogosto shows the diphthong closing to ⟨o⟩ instead.^[4]

The word is panromance: French août, Occitan agost, Catalan agost, Spanish agosto, Portuguese agosto, Sardinian austu and Romanian august, beside agust.^[5][8][3] It is Friulian avost and Engadine avuost, and Albanian has gušti.^[9][3]

Latin augustus “consecrated, majestic” comes from Proto-Italic *augostos, formed on the root of augeō (“to increase”).^[1][10] The learned augusto is a doublet.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a document from Fabriano of 1186.^[2][11] DELI's is a Florentine account book of 1211, followed by Tuscan ogosto (1285) and avosto in a 13th-century poem on the transience of life.^[4] The word has always meant the month, the sixth of the old Roman calendar and the eighth of the year counted from January.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Regional forms were many: avosto in the north, Florentine aghosto and oghosto, Lucchese and Pisan ogosto.^[3] In most French dialects and in Galician the word also came to mean “harvest”.^[9]

From the month came agostano, first in the Medieval Latin of Bologna in 1250 and in Italian in 1664,^[4] and ferragosto, from the Latin festival of the first of August.^[3][6] Fixed phrases are tondo come la luna d'agosto, said of a round face or a simpleton, and vendere il sole d'agosto, to present something obvious as new.^[12] The word was borrowed into Cimbrian and Somali.^[1]

Timeline

• 1186 – A document from Fabriano has agosto.^[2][11]
• 1211 – The word appears in a Florentine account book.^[4][6]
• 1250 – Medieval Latin agostanus at Bologna.^[4]
• 1285 – Tuscan ogosto.^[4]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses agosto as an adjective, “imperial”.^[10][13]
• 1664 – Agostano is recorded in Duez's dictionary.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. August, the eighth month of the year, of 31 days: torneremo a fine agosto.^[6][11][7]
2. (literary) The heat of high summer.^[14]

Word family

• agostano

Related words

• augusto
• ferragosto
• agostino
• Latin augustus

Usage notes

Old Italian also had an adjective agosto “imperial, majestic”, the same word as augusto: Dante writes of l'alma, che fia giù agosta, / dell'alto Arrigo (“the soul, imperial on earth, of the lofty Henry”).^[6][13][10] It is a literary archaism.^[6][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 2322
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
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 Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ a b Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 2320
11. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
12. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana