ascondere

Forms

ascondere (first-person singular present ascóndo, first-person singular past historic ascósi, past participle ascósto, auxiliary avére)^[1] The past participle is ascoso;^[2][3] ascosto is archaic or rare.^[2][3] The past historic is ascosi, ascondesti.^[4][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin abscondō (“to hide”),^[5][6][1] with the past participle abscōnsum behind ascoso.^[5] The Latin verb is a compound of abs- (“away”) and condō (“to put together, store”), and the second part is formed from com- and the root of dō (“to give”).^{[5][6][7][8][1]}

DEI calls the Italian verb literary, but the spread of the word across the Romance languages shows that it was once popular.^[9] It lives on in Romanian ascunde, and the same verb is Old French escondre, Old Occitan escondre, Catalan escondir, Spanish esconder and Portuguese esconder.^[10][11][12] Its closed /o/ led Körting to start from *abscundō, while Devoto explains it by crossing with the participle.^[12][8] Wiktionary suggests that the past historic and the participle ⟨ascosi⟩ and ⟨ascosto⟩ follow porre, in place of the expected ⟨ascondetti⟩ and ⟨asconduto⟩.^[1]

The everyday word became nascondere, with the prefix in- partly fused to the verb; in the dialects the Latin prefix was replaced by ex- or strengthened with ⟨in-⟩, and northern scondere lost its first vowel.^[10][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Giacomino Pugliese, at the beginning of the 13th century, in the sense “to hide”; the LEI dates the reflexive ascondersi “to hide oneself” from the same poet.^[5][10] The TLIO's first text is the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur.^[13] Devoto–Oli dates the word to the end of the 12th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the verb for removing anything from sight or knowledge, and also for a star setting, for a blade driven deep, and for meaning hidden under the letter of a poem.^[13] Dante's Mirate la dottrina che s’asconde / sotto ’l velame de li versi strani (“see the teaching hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses”) is the best known example.^[14][3] Brunetto Latini, Petrarch and Boccaccio all use it.^[15]

After the Middle Ages it became a word of poetry: Leopardi writes Vano è saper quel che natura asconde.^[6][2] Today it is literary, in place of nascondere.^[6][7][16]

Timeline

• Early 13th century – Giacomino Pugliese uses ascondere and ascondersi.^[5][10]
• Early 13th century – Giacomo da Lentini uses the participle ascuso.^[5]
• 1274 – Old Lombard asconderse appears in Pietro da Barsegapè.^[10]
• End of the 13th century – The transitive verb is recorded in Matteo dei Libri and Brunetto Latini.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary, transitive) To hide, conceal from sight.^[6][2][7][1]
2. (literary, transitive) To keep secret, not to reveal.^[6]
3. (literary, pronominal) ascondersi: to hide oneself, to disappear from view.^[4][16][2]

Word family

• ascoso
• ascondimento
• disascondere

Related words

• nascondere
• nascondiglio
• scondere
• Latin abscondo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
4. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 319
10. ^ 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. 1, 144
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
13. ^ a b Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
14. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
16. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli