ballare

Forms

ballare (first-person singular present bàllo, first-person singular past historic ballài, past participle ballàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian balare (Arezzo, about 1282, Genoese, before 1311), Sicilian ballari and Piedmontese balè.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin ballō (“to dance; to sway”), recorded in Saint Augustine in 393.^[4][5][2][1] Inscriptions with Latin baliator at Pompeii (before 79) and ballatores at Rome (3rd century) suggest that the verb existed in spoken Latin much earlier.^[2] The Latin word is usually traced to Ancient Greek βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”): the sense “to leap, sway” is found in its variant πάλλω (pállō, “to shake”), and “to dance” in βαλλίζω (ballízō), recorded in the Greek of Sicily and southern Italy, with which the Latin verb is glossed.^[5][4][6][7] O. Haas proposed instead an orgiastic dance word βαλλίζειν (ballízein) of Magna Graecia, from a Greek word for the phallus corresponding to Ancient Greek φαλλός (phallós).^[4] Others linked it with Latin balla (“ball”) or thought it imitative, but the LEI finds these views at odds with the Latin records, and DELI warns that the history is less simple than it looks.^[2][4]

The verb is Old French baler, Occitan balar, Catalan ballar and Friulian balâ, and Spanish bailar and Portuguese bailar with an unexplained ⟨-i-⟩; it is not found in Romanian.^[5][2][6][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Restoro d'Arezzo, 1282, in the Aretine form balare.^[3][5][2] The sense is “to move to the rhythm of music”, often with others and as a ritual or a pastime.^[3] DELI's first date is Dante, before 1321;^[4][9] Zingarelli has before 1257.^[4][9]

Semantic evolution

Dante, in Purgatorio 28, writes of donna che balli, a woman dancing with her feet close to the ground.^[10][11] Old Italian already had figurative uses: “to fidget”, and essere in ballo e ballare, “to be in it and have to dance”, that is to see a difficult business through, still a proverb today.^[3][9] The transitive “to dance (a dance)” is in the 14th-century translation of Saint Augustine.^[4]

Later senses follow the idea of movement: “to wobble, shake, jolt” (Garzoni, before 1589), and of clothes, “to be too big” (Cellini, before 1571).^[4] The proverb quando il gatto non c’è i topi ballano (when the cat is away the mice dance) is common to the dictionaries.^[9][12] The derivatives ballo, ballerino (1342) and ballerina (Lorenzo de' Medici) are native, but ballata, the old dance song, came from Old Occitan balada.^[5][4] Sardinian borrowed the Italian verb.^[1]

Timeline

• Before 79 – Baliator “dancer” is written on a wall at Pompeii.^[2]
• 393 – Saint Augustine uses Latin ballare.^[2][4]
• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo has balare.^[3][5]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses the verb for leaping, skipping.^[4]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses ballare “to dance”.^[4]
• 1342 – Ballerino is recorded.^[5]
• Before 1571 – Cellini says a garment balla when it is too big.^[4]
• Before 1589 – Garzoni uses the verb for “to wobble, jolt”.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To dance: to move in time to music: Hanno ballato fino all’alba.^{[7][13][14][1]}
2. To be unable to keep still, from nerves or joy; to shiver with cold.^[7][13][9]
3. Of things, to wobble, be unsteady; to vibrate or jolt: Questa sedia balla.^{[7][13][14][1]}
4. Of clothes or a ring, to be too large: Le scarpe mi ballano.^[7][13][12]
5. (sport) Of a team or defence, to be unable to hold back the opponents.^[13][7]
6. (transitive) To dance a particular dance: ballare la mazurka.^[7][13][1]

Word family

• ballo
• balletto
• ballata
• ballerino
• ballerina
• ballabile
• traballare
• ballonzolare

Related words

• Late Latin ballō
• Ancient Greek βάλλω (bállō)
• French bal

Usage notes

Far ballare qualcuno is to make someone do one's bidding, or in sport to run rings round opponents;^[7][12][9] far ballare i soldi is to spend them;^[7][12][9] ora si balla! means “now things get serious”.^[7][12][9] Quando si è in ballo bisogna ballare: once you have started something, you must go on with it.^[9][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 4, 791
3. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 416
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
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 d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli