carpire

Forms

carpire (first-person singular present carpìsco, first-person singular past historic carpìi, past participle carpìto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin carpō (“to pluck, gather”), moved from the third conjugation to the verbs in ⟨-ire⟩, through a Vulgar Latin *carpīre.^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} The LEI takes the change of conjugation to be probably Late Latin already, since it is widespread in Romance.^[7] The same verb is Old French charpir (“to pull; to card wool”), Occitan carpir, Catalan carpir, Spanish carpir and Portuguese carpir (“to tear”).^[8][9][7] DEI notes that it is pan-Romance but not Romanian, and wonders whether a Greek verb meaning “to gather fruit” helped the change of conjugation.^[10]

The Latin verb belonged to the vocabulary of harvesting.^[8][11] De Vaan derives it from Proto-Indo-European *kerp- (“to pick, pluck”), with Hittite karp- (“to take away, lift”), Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit”), Lithuanian kir̃pti (“to cut”) and Old High German herbist (“autumn”), the “time of reaping”.^[12][8] DELI instead calls the Latin word pre-Indo-European.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Proverbia pseudoiacopiana, a 13th-century Abruzzese poem, where it means to pull off clothing.^[13][7] The early sense was to take something, usually a plant, by pulling it from where it grows: to pluck flowers or fruit.^[13][7]

Semantic evolution

Dante uses the verb in Paradiso 9 for a lord “for whom the net is already being woven” to catch him (che già per lui carpir si fa la ragna), and DELI dates the sense “to snatch by force or cunning” from him.^[2][14] In Old Italian it also meant to carry off, to catch by surprise or ambush, and to steal by deceit, and in Bologna to crawl on all fours.^[13]

The plain sense “to pluck” lived on in Tuscany and central Italy: Leon Battista Alberti writes carpisce el frutto, and Castiglione's bee goes carpendo i fiori in the meadows.^[7][15][14] Bembo explained carpone “on all fours” as walking while grasping the ground.^[14] The modern standard sense is figurative: to obtain something by fraud or cunning, as in carpire un segreto or carpire la buonafede.^[3][4][15]

Timeline

• 1200s – The Proverbia pseudoiacopiana use carpire in the Abruzzi.^[7][13]
• Before 1313 – A Florentine translation of Ovid uses carpire of flowers.^[7]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses the verb in the Paradiso.^[2][3]
• 1324–1328 – Jacopo della Lana uses it in Bologna for crawling on all fours.^[7]
• c. 1438 – Leon Battista Alberti uses carpire of picking fruit.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To snatch, carry off by force or surprise: Le carpì di mano il biglietto.^[3][4][16]
2. To obtain by fraud or cunning, to extort: Gli ha carpito la password con una telefonata falsa;^{[3][4][5][15]} carpire la buonafede di qualcuno (to abuse someone's trust).^{[3][4][5][15]}
3. (archaic or central Italy) To pick, pluck, grab.^[15][1]

Word family

• carpitore

Related words

• carpone
• Latin carpō

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 12, 329
8. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 778
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
14. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
15. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli