comare

Forms

comare f (plural comari, masculine compare)^[1] Old Italian forms include comadre, commare, cummadre and comar.^[2] Older and regional spellings are commare, commadre and commatre.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin commāter (“godmother”), a Church word recorded in Gregory the Great,^[5][6][7] formed with com- (“with, together”) and māter (“mother”).^[6][8][1] The Latin noun is a compound of the same kind as the masculine that gave compare.^[7][5] The Latin word for mother goes back to Proto-Italic *mātēr and Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (“mother”).^[9][1]

The form shows that the word reached the standard language through the northern dialects: DELI says so, and Nocentini points to the loss of the consonant of madre and to the transferred senses “family friend” and “gossip”, which grew up in the north.^[6][7] Devoto starts from a form *commatre handed down in a northern, perhaps Venetian, tradition that simplified double consonants and reduced ⟨-tr-⟩ to ⟨-r-⟩.^[10] Prati explained the loss of /d/ by the word's use before names,^[11] while the LEI follows Rohlfs in assuming northern influence, with the popular change /tr/ > /dr/ > /r/, and notes that northern forms often entered Tuscany and spread from there.^[12]

The word lives on in every Romance language except Romanian: French commère, Old Occitan comaire, Catalan comare, Spanish comadre, Portuguese comadre, Friulian comari and Romansh cumar.^[12][7][13] Meyer-Lübke derives Romanian cumătră from Slavic instead.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first found in the 13th-century Rainardo e Lesengrino, with the sense of a woman who holds another's child at baptism or confirmation.^[6][4] There a goat asks the wolf: de chi se' vui mia compare, / che vui m’apelai vostra comare? (“how are you my godfather, that you called me your godmother?”).^[4] The TLIO's first dated record is the south-eastern Tuscan Questioni filosofiche of 1298.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The bond of godparenthood made the word one of mutual relation: the comare is the godmother as seen by the child's mother, and the mother as seen by the godmother, while madrina names the same woman as seen by the godchild.^[7][2][14] Because such ties joined friends, the word came to mean a close woman friend or neighbour, used by Boccaccio in 1353, and, scornfully, a gossiping woman, already in Rustico di Filippo before 1300.^[6][15] From the custom of having the midwife carry the newborn to baptism it also meant “midwife”, first in Savonarola before 1498, a sense common in northern Italy.^[6][16][11]

The euphemism for death, still heard in comare secca, dates from the 18th century, and in the Maremma the word also named intermittent fever.^[5][8] In fables it is put before the names of female animals, as in comare volpe.^[8][3] Where /l/ became /r/, comare sounded like male “evil”, so in Ticino a contrary form combene was coined for “godmother” and “midwife”.^[12][13] In the modern standard language the godparent senses are regional, mainly central and southern, and the commonest use is the plural for women of the neighbourhood who gossip.^[16][3][14] Wiktionary lists the English slang word goomah among its borrowings.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – Rainardo e Lesengrino has comare “godmother”.^[6][4]
• 1298 – The Questioni filosofiche give the TLIO's first dated record.^[2]
• Before 1300 – Rustico di Filippo uses the word for a gossiping woman.^[6]
• 1342 – Old Pavian has the plural comar.^[12]
• 1353 – Boccaccio uses it for a woman friend.^[6]
• Before 1498 – Savonarola uses it for a midwife.^[6]
• 18th century – Comare is first found as a name for death.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (regional) A godmother at baptism or confirmation in relation to the child's mother, or the mother in relation to the godmother.^{[16][17][14][1]}
2. (regional) A woman who acts as witness at a wedding.^[8][3][14]
3. A woman neighbour or old friend;^[8][16][17] (derogatory) a nosy gossip: le comari del cortile.^[8][16][17]
4. (in fables) A title put before the names of female animals: comare volpe.^[8][3]
5. (regional, archaic) A midwife.^[8][16][17]
6. (colloquial, euphemistic) Death, also comare secca.^[8][16][3]
7. (informal) A married man's mistress.^[1]

Word family

• comarella
• comaruccia
• comaraggio

Related words

• compare
• madre
• madrina
• Latin mater

Usage notes

A separate, rare verb comare existed in older Italian, with two senses.^[5][15] In the Favole di Esopo it meant “to deceive”, which DEI takes for a misreading of coniare; in Segneri, in the 17th century, it was reflexive, “to adorn oneself”, a learned word from Latin comere “to dress the hair”.^[5][15] The TLIO records a verb comare from Latin comere in Petrarch's Trionfi.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
5. ^ a b c d e f Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1025
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 312
12. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 15, 1385
13. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
14. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
16. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
17. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse