aumentare

Forms

aumentare (first-person singular present auménto, first-person singular past historic aumentài, past participle aumentàto, auxiliary (transitive) avére or (intransitive) èssere)^[1] Old forms include agumentare, augmentare and augumentare, the last still in use in the 15th century.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin augmentāre (“to increase”), from augmentum (“growth, increase”), from augeō (“to increase”) and the suffix -mentum.^[5][6][1][7] It is a learned or half-learned word: the LEI derives it from the Late Latin verb through a stage with /mm/, later simplified, as autore comes from Latin auctōrem.^[4] The form Old Italian agumentare has a /g/ inserted to break the hiatus, as in a Tuscan form of pavone, augmentare is a 14th-century Latinism, and augumentare has an extra vowel, supported by Late Latin augumentum.^[4]

The only popular outcomes of the Latin verb go back to a reduced Vulgar Latin *agmentāre: Aromanian amindari “to earn”, Basque emendatu “to grow” and a central Calabrian verb meaning “to add”.^[4][8] The other Romance languages borrowed the verb from Latin, as Italian did: French augmenter (about 1370), Old Occitan augmentar (1310), Catalan augmentar (from 1335), Spanish aumentar and Portuguese aumentar.^[4]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂ewg- (“to grow”) and is related to Ancient Greek αὔξω (aúxō, “to increase”), Gothic 𐌰𐌿𐌺𐌰𐌽 (aukan) and Lithuanian áugti (“to grow”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Tuscan translation of Albertano da Brescia by Andrea da Grosseto (1268), where the verb means to make something larger in size or quantity.^[2] DELI dates both the transitive and the intransitive use to Boccaccio, around 1336.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the verb widely in figurative senses: to increase a state or its power, to spread a faith, to make a penalty harsher, to improve a skill, and even of a translator who adds words of his own.^[2] Giovanni Villani writes of the Florentines' wish to aumentare e favorare the standing of the Commune.^[10][11]

In legal Italian of the 18th and 19th centuries the verb was used for making a penalty or a fine heavier (aumentare la pena, 1756).^[4] Modern Italian adds the colloquial use for prices (the baker has put up the price of bread), and the knitting term for adding stitches.^[6][12] The intransitive verb takes essere: sono aumentato di due chili, I have put on two kilos.^[13][1]

Timeline

• 1268 – Andrea da Grosseto uses aumentare.^[2]
• c. 1336 – Boccaccio uses the verb both transitively and intransitively.^[3]
• Before 1444 – Bernardino da Siena uses the form augumentare.^[3]
• 1756 – Aumentare la pena appears in a law of the Kingdom of Naples.^[4]
• 1815 – Aumentare la multa appears in the penal code of Lombardy–Venetia.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To increase, to make larger in size, number or quantity: L'azienda ha aumentato il personale.^[6][14][13]
2. (transitive) To make stronger or more intense: Aumenta il riscaldamento, ho freddo.^[6][13]
3. (transitive, colloquial) To put up the price of something: Hanno aumentato il gasolio.^[6][14][15]
4. (knitting) To add stitches.^[6][12][13]
5. (intransitive) To grow, to rise in size, number, intensity or weight: Il traffico aumenta ogni estate.^[6][12][13]
6. (intransitive, colloquial) To go up in price: Il caffè è aumentato.^[6][14][16]

Word family

• aumento
• aumentabile
• aumentativo

Related words

• autore
• Latin augmentum
• Latin augeo
• French augmenter

References

1. ^ a b c d 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 Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 3, 2281
5. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 363
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ 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
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli