Etymologically
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bastare

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Pronunciation

  • /basˈta.re/[1]

Forms

bastare (first-person singular present bàsto, first-person singular past historic bastài, past participle bastàto, auxiliary èssere)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *bastāre, a verb not recorded in classical Latin;[2][3][4][1] Medieval Latin has “bastare” in Uguccione's dictionary.[2][3][4][1] The same verb is Old Occitan bastar, Catalan bastar, Spanish bastar, Portuguese bastar and Romansh bastar, but it is missing in Romanian; in Occitan, Catalan and Spanish it replaced Latin sufficiō (“to be enough”).[4][3] Old French baster (before 1270) was taken from Italian, and the interjection French baste comes from Italian basta.[4][2][5]

The further origin is uncertain, and DELI calls it unknown.[6][7] The most common explanation, followed by DEI, Nocentini and the LEI, takes the Vulgar Latin verb from Ancient Greek βαστάζω (bastázō, “to lift, carry, bear”), perhaps through the Greek spoken in southern Italy.[3][2][4] The sense would have moved from “to carry, to bear” to “to hold out, to last”, the meaning of the oldest records, and then to “to be enough”;[2] Nocentini compares Spanish abastar (“to supply”), to bring in enough goods to last the time needed.[2] Migliorini and Duro derived it instead from Late Latin bastum (“pack saddle; stick”), with the sense “to serve as a support”, and Devoto turned the relation round, from basto (“pack saddle”): “to match the load a pack saddle can carry”.[6][8][9] Meyer-Lübke put it under Latin *bastus (“stuffed, well supplied”), and Pisani thought of a Mediterranean word found from Italy to Spain; the LEI holds that the spread through Italy, the Alps, southern France and Iberia points rather to a Vulgar Latin verb.[10][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI dates the first record to 1253, in the Poemetto didattico, with the sense “to be enough”; the TLIO's first example is in the Splanamento of Girardo Patecchio of Cremona, of the same century.[6][11][7] The sense “to last” is in a Sienese letter of 1260, and Giordano da Pisa (1305–1306) has the noun bastanza “duration”.[6]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian bastare meant both “to be enough, to be capable” and “to last, to hold out”; the TLIO also records the sense “to stop, to cease”.[11][6] Dante has both: in the Paradiso “questo vi basti a vostro salvamento” (“let this be enough for your salvation”), and in the Inferno he wishes that a sinner's nails may last him for ever at his work.[12][13] The sense “to last” stayed in literary use until the 19th century and is now archaic.[3][9] The impersonal use (basta che…, “it is enough that…”) is recorded from Boccaccio, in 1353.[6]

The interjection basta! “enough!” is first recorded in Florio's dictionary of 1598, and Italian lent it to other languages, among them French and German.[6][10] Bastevole (13th–14th century) and bastante (before 1471) mean “sufficient”, and the old phrase a bastanza became the adverb abbastanza “enough”.[6][2] In recipes quanto basta, abbreviated q.b., means “as much as needed”.[14][13]

Timeline

  • 1253 – Bastare “to be enough” appears in the Poemetto didattico.[6][7]
  • 1260 – A Sienese letter uses it for “to last”.[6]
  • Before 1270 – Old French baster is borrowed from Italian.[4]
  • Before 1294 – The adverb abbastanza is recorded.[2]
  • 1353 – Boccaccio uses bastare impersonally.[6]
  • Before 1471 – Bastante “sufficient” is recorded.[6]
  • 1598 – Florio records the interjection basta!.[6]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To be enough, to suffice (with a for the person or purpose): Due ore mi bastano per finire il compito.[7][9][15]
  2. (impersonal) To be enough to do something or for something to happen: Basta premere il pulsante e la porta si apre. Basta che means “provided that”.[7][9][13]
  3. (literary, archaic) To last, to hold out.[7][9][15]
  4. Bastare a sé stesso: to be self-sufficient.[9][13] Non bastare l'animo (di): not to have the heart or the courage (to).[9][13][16]

Word family

  • bastone
  • basto
  • Spanish bastar

Usage notes

Bastare takes the auxiliary essere.[9][15] Quanto basta (q.b.) in recipes leaves the quantity to the cook.[14][13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  3. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 455
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 5, 96
  5. ^ Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  7. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  11. ^ a b Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
  12. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
  13. ^ a b c d e f Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  14. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  15. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli