capacità

Forms

capacità f^[1] Old forms include Old Italian capacitade and Old Italian capacitate, and in Palermo cappachitati.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is learned: it is borrowed from Latin capācitās (“capacity, ability to hold”).^{[5][6][7][8][1]} The Italian form continues the Latin accusative with its last syllable dropped.^[9] The Latin noun is formed from capāx (“able to hold”) with the suffix -tās,^[10][1] and the adjective comes from capiō (“to take, hold”) with the suffix -āx.^[1][11]

The Latin noun was taken up as a learned word in other Romance languages too: French capacité (from 1314), Old Occitan capacitat, Catalan capacitat, Spanish capacidad (from 1490) and Portuguese capacidade.^[3] The sense “a capable person” is a Gallicism from the French word, which entered Italian in the Napoleonic period.^[3][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is Dante's Vita nuova (about 1292–1293); DELI dates Dante's use, in the sense “the ability to contain”, to 1294.^[2][5][7] The TLIO's oldest senses are the ability to receive and hold something, and the ability to do or to understand something.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The sense “ability, intelligence” is recorded in Iacopone da Todi before 1306.^[5] Old Italian also used the word for the size of a space and in phrases such as di capacità “large”;^[2][13][4] Boccaccio writes of water that overflowed its capacità.^[2][13][4] DEI dates the sense “suitability, skill” to the 16th century.^[12]

The legal sense, the capacity to hold rights and duties, appears in V. Cuoco in 1801, and electrical capacity in G. Rasori in 1818.^[5] Capacità for “a capable person” is recorded in 1848;^[5][12] DEI calls it a Gallicism, whose development English capacity helped along.^[5][12] Modern technical uses include the volume of a container, the capacity of a battery and a computer's memory capacity.^[3][7][14]

Timeline

• About 1292–1293 – Dante uses the word in the Vita nuova.^[2]
• Before 1306 – Iacopone da Todi uses it for “ability”.^[5]
• 1309–1310 – The Sienese Costituto speaks of the capacità of a space.^[3]
• 1801 – V. Cuoco uses the legal sense.^[5]
• 1818 – G. Rasori uses the electrical sense.^[5]
• 1848 – The sense “a capable person” is recorded.^[5]
• 1950 – Sinisgalli uses capacità mnemonica of a computer.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. capacity: the ability to hold or contain, or the amount something can hold: una cisterna della capacità di mille litri.^{[7][15][9][1]}
2. ability, skill, aptitude for doing something; in the plural, a person's gifts: una donna di grandi capacità.^{[7][15][16][1]}
3. (law) The capacity to hold rights and duties or to perform legal acts: capacità giuridica, capacità di agire, capacità d'intendere e di volere.^[15][16][17]
4. (physics) The name of various quantities: capacità elettrica, capacità termica; the charge a battery can deliver.^[7][9][14]
5. (computing) The amount of data a memory can store.^[7][14]
6. (plural) Economic resources.^[9]

Word family

• sovraccapacità

Related words

• capace
• incapacità
• capiente
• Latin capācitās
• French capacité

Usage notes

The word is invariable: la capacità, le capacità.^[7][15][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ 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. 10, 1577
4. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975)
9. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c d Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 730
13. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
14. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
16. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli