catturare

Forms

catturare (first-person singular present cattùro, first-person singular past historic catturài, past participle catturàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Dialect forms include Genoese cattûrâ, Bolognese caturar, Romagnol caturé and Sicilian catturàri.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Italian cattura (“capture, arrest”) + -are.^{[3][4][5][6][1]} cattura is borrowed from Latin captūra (“a taking; catch”), from capiō (“to take”).^[3][4] DELI and Nocentini treat it as a learned word; the LEI, by contrast, takes the noun as a popular continuation of the Latin word, found mainly in Italy, and only an Old Lucchese captura as a Latinism.^[3][4][2] French capture, with its verb French capturer, and Spanish captura are Latinisms of the 15th and 16th centuries.^[2]

De Vaan traces the Latin verb to Proto-Italic *kapi- (“to seize”), related to Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍆𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hafjan, “to lift”) and Ancient Greek κάπτω (káptō, “to gulp down”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The LEI's first record is in Iaconello da Rieti (1482), with the sense “to take prisoner in war”.^[2] The sense “to arrest a wrongdoer” is recorded in Traiano Boccalini in 1612, and in Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger in 1618, where someone asks why the guards are not out “to catch those madmen”.^[2][3][8]

Semantic evolution

The verb first belonged to war and police work: Tommaseo describes it as what the constables do, and Cesare Beccaria writes that milder punishments would let the law be content with weaker evidence for arresting.^[9][8] It was soon used of things as well, of goods seized as contraband.^[9][10]

The capture of wild animals alive, with traps and nets, followed the noun cattura, which has that sense from 1906.^[2][5] Geography uses the verb for a river that widens its basin by eroding into a neighbouring one and taking its waters (1956); the noun in this sense is perhaps a calque of French capture.^[3] Figurative uses such as catturare l'attenzione “to capture attention” and the computing sense “to capture data” are modern.^[5][10][11] Catturando “wanted fugitive” is recorded from 1985 and ricatturare “to recapture” from 1983.^[2]

Timeline

• 1332 – The noun cattura appears in a Pisan statute.^[12]
• 1482 – Iaconello da Rieti uses catturare for “to take prisoner in war”.^[2]
• 1612 – Traiano Boccalini uses it for “to arrest”.^[2][10]
• 1618 – Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger uses it.^[3][5]
• 1956 – The geographical sense, of rivers, is recorded.^[3]
• 1983 – Ricatturare “to recapture” is recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To capture, to arrest someone, especially after a long hunt: La polizia ha catturato i due rapinatori al confine.^{[5][13][6][1]}
2. (transitive) To take prisoner in war; to seize something in a military action: catturare un convoglio nemico.^[5][13][10]
3. (transitive) To catch a wild animal alive, with nets or traps: I guardiacaccia hanno catturato un orso.^[5][13][14]
4. (transitive, figurative) To attract, win: catturare l'attenzione.^[5][13][10]
5. (geography) Of a river, to widen its basin by taking the waters of a neighbouring stream.^[5][13][6]
6. (computing) To store data found, for example, on the internet in a file; to download.^[5][11][1]

Word family

• ricatturare
• catturando
• catturabile

Related words

• cattura
• capire
• cattivo
• Latin capiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 11, 996
3. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
9. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
12. ^ Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
13. ^ 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
14. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana