ambiare

Forms

ambiare (first-person singular present àmbio, first-person singular past historic ambiài, past participle ambiàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *amblāre, the syncopated form of ambulō (“to walk”).^[1][2][3] DELI explains the sound change: the unstressed ⟨-u-⟩ before the stress fell, and the resulting cluster ⟨-bl-⟩ became ⟨-bi-⟩.^[2] Nocentini notes that the verb was specialised for the gait of four-footed animals such as the camel, which move both legs of one side together.^[3] It is a doublet of the learned ambulare.^[1]

The same Latin verb gave Old French ambler, Old Occitan amblar, Spanish amblar and Romanian umbla (“to walk”), and Meyer-Lübke notes that the Italian, French and Occitan verbs share the sense “to amble”.^[3][4] Körting held the Italian verb to be a loan from French ambler, since the Italian continuation of the Latin verb was the learned word;^{[5][2][3][6][7]} DELI, Nocentini, the LEI and the TLIO all derive it directly from Latin.^{[5][2][3][6][7]}

The Latin verb belongs with Umbrian forms of a stem *ala-; de Vaan derives both from Proto-Italic *ala- (“to wander”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂elh₂- (“to wander”), with amb- (“around”) prefixed.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is an anonymous text on the Antichrist from the third quarter of the 13th century, Venetian-Euganean in origin and copied in Umbria and the Marche; the TLIO's first sense describes a horse or ass moving the legs of one side forward together.^[7] DELI dates the verb from the Italian Tesoro at the end of the 13th century: Ché alcuno [cavallo] conviene bene correre, ed alcuno bene ambiare (“for some horses must run well, and some amble well”).^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was a term of horsemanship: to go at an amble, and to lead horses or mules at that gait.^[7] By extension it meant taking small quick steps, and the Pecorone (end of the 14th century) uses it ironically of a person made to trot and amble about a room.^[7][6][10] A proverb recorded by Cavalca before 1342, cavallo vecchio tardi impara ad ambiare (“an old horse is slow to learn to amble”), had a variant with asino, “ass”.^[6][11]

The present participle ambiante was the usual adjective for an ambling horse or mule from the 13th century to D'Annunzio, and Old Venetian had anblar.^[6] The noun àmbio, the ambling gait, is a back-formation recorded from about 1325.^[2][6] Modern dictionaries mark the verb as archaic or as a term of riding.^[12][13][1]

Timeline

• 1250–1275 – A Venetian-Euganean text on the Antichrist has the verb, the first record in the TLIO.^[7]
• Second half of the 13th century – Folgore da San Gimignano uses ambiante of an ambling horse.^[6]
• End of the 13th century – The Italian Tesoro uses ambiare.^[2][9]
• 1321 – Old Venetian anblar is recorded.^[6]
• About 1325 – The noun àmbio appears in the Italian Aesop.^[2]
• Before 1342 – Cavalca quotes the proverb of the old horse that learns to amble late.^[6]
• 1605 – Allegri uses ambieggiando “ambling”.^[6]
• 1919 – D'Annunzio still uses ambiante.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, riding) Of a horse or other four-footed animal, to amble: to move forward both legs of the same side together.^{[14][13][15][1]}

Word family

• ambio
• ambiante
• ambiatore
• ambiatura

Related words

• ambulare
• Latin ambulō
• French ambler

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
5. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 2, 596
7. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 1, 381
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
14. ^ De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
15. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse