capire

Forms

capire (first-person singular present capìsco, first-person singular past historic capìi, past participle capìto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian also had capere, mostly in the third person (cape, capeva).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin capiō (“to take; to hold; to grasp”), with a change of conjugation: Latin verbs in ⟨-ĕre⟩ with ⟨-i-⟩ in the present stem tended to pass to ⟨-īre⟩.^[4][5][6] Devoto–Oli and Sabatini–Coletti posit a Vulgar Latin *capīre.^[7][8] Italian kept the meaning “to understand”, while the other Romance languages kept “to have room, to fit”, which Old Italian also had: Old French chavoir, Occitan caber, Catalan caber, Spanish caber and Portuguese caber.^[9][10] The LEI lists the same change of conjugation in Romansh capir and Friulian capî.^[6]

Wiktionary traces the Latin verb to Proto-Italic *kapiō and Proto-Indo-European *kh₂pyéti, from a root *kap- (“to seize”);^[1] de Vaan gives an i-present *kh₂p-i- but allows a non-Indo-European ⟨*kap-i-⟩.^[11] Related words are Ancient Greek κάπτω (káptō, “to gulp down”) and Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍆𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hafjan, “to lift”), and through another formation 𐌷𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌽 (haban, “to have”) and German haben.^[11][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first attestation is the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio from the Marche, of the second half of the 12th century; its first senses are spatial, “to fit, to have room” and “to hold”.^[12] DELI dates the intransitive “to be contained” to before 1294 in Guittone d'Arezzo, and the sense “to understand” to the 14th century, in a translation of Gregory the Great.^[4] Nocentini dates “to understand” to the first half of the 14th century.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The old spatial sense lasted long in literary Italian: Dante writes “Che vedrai non capere in questi giri” (which you will see does not fit in these circles, Paradiso 3), Ariosto uses it of a lance that could not hold a seventh knight, and the LEI records it until Metastasio, about 1782.^[13][2][6] Tuscan still says nell'inferno non ci si cape (there is no room in hell).^[13]

The sense “to understand” became the ordinary one, with phrases such as capire al volo (to catch on at once), capire l'antifona (to take the hint) and capire fischi per fiaschi (to get hold of the wrong end of the stick).^[5][3][14] The second person future capirai! became an ironic exclamation, and si capisce means “of course”.^[5][3]

English slang capisce and capeesh are reshapings of the Italian verb.^[1]

Timeline

• Second half of the 12th century – The Ritmo di Sant'Alessio uses the verb in its spatial sense.^[12]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses it for “to be contained”.^[4]
• 14th century – “To understand” in a translation of Gregory the Great.^[4]
• About 1782 – The LEI's last literary example of the sense “to contain”, in Metastasio.^[6]
• 1848 – Capienza “capacity” is recorded, capiente follows in 1855.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To understand, to grasp with the mind: non ho capito la domanda.^[5][7][8]
2. To hear or read well enough to make out: parla più piano, non capisco.^[7][14][15]
3. To understand a person's feelings or character; to be indulgent toward, to excuse: nessuno mi capisce, cerca di capirlo.^[5][7][8]
4. (intransitive) To be intelligent, to be quick to understand: è una bambina che capisce tutto.^[5][8][3]
5. capirci: to make sense of something: in questa storia non ci capisco niente.^[5][3]
6. capirsi: to understand each other, to get on: io e mia sorella ci capiamo al volo.^[8][1]
7. (rare, literary) To fit, to be contained.^[1][8][14]

Word family

• capiente
• capienza
• capibile
• ricapire

Related words

• capace
• capirsi
• capere
• Latin capiō

Usage notes

The present takes the ⟨-isc-⟩ infix: capisco, capisci, capiscono.^[1][7] The LEI separates the Latin capĕre type, the capīre and capiscere types and a rarer capēre type in its article.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 2, 684
3. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d e Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 10, 1609
7. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b 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 Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
13. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli