Etymologically
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complicato

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Pronunciation

  • /kom.pliˈka.to/[1]

Forms

complicato (feminine complicata, masculine plural complicati, feminine plural complicate, superlative complicatissimo)[1]

Etymology

It is the past participle of complicare, used as an adjective: from Italian complicare + -ato.[2][3][4][1] The verb is a learned word, borrowed from Latin complicāre (“to fold together, roll up”), from com- (“together”) and plicō (“to fold”), the source of popular piegare.[2][3][5][6]

The LEI compares Romansh cumplichà, French compliqué (an illness affecting several parts of the body from about 1400, “intricate” from 1690), Spanish complicado and Portuguese complicado, and takes the medical use in Italian as a Gallicism.[6] The adjective in the sense “difficult” is older than the verb in the sense “to make difficult”, which DELI dates only to 1865.[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The LEI's first record is in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), where complicato means “joined, interwoven”; a letter is complicata, “folded, rolled up”, in Caviceo (1508), and Tasso (1588) uses the word for “implicated” in an affair.[6] DELI dates the sense “confused, difficult” to Leonardo, before 1519.[2]

Semantic evolution

The LEI dates the modern sense “intricate, hard to understand” from Galileo (1638), who writes of a process that seems to him assai complicato (“very complicated”).[6][7] The literal “folded together” went out of use, and Tommaseo marks it as obsolete.[8] In medicine a malattia complicata is one that shows symptoms of another disease, and the noun complicatezza is recorded in the 19th century.[8][9] In modern use complicato is also said of a person whose way of thinking and acting is hard to make out.[5][4]

Timeline

  • 1499 – Complicato “interwoven” appears in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.[6]
  • 1508 – Caviceo uses it for a folded letter.[6]
  • Before 1519 – Leonardo uses it for “confused, difficult”.[2]
  • 1588 – Tasso uses it for “implicated”.[6]
  • 1638 – Galileo uses it for “intricate”.[6]
  • 1865 – The verb complicare “to make difficult” is recorded.[2]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. complicated, intricate, hard to understand or to solve: Le istruzioni del montaggio erano troppo complicate.[5][4][10]
  2. Of a person: hard to understand or deal with, with a contradictory character: È una ragazza complicata, ma sincera.[5][4][10]
  3. (medicine) Of an illness: accompanied by complications.[4][10][8]

Word family

  • complicatamente
  • complicatezza
  • complicare
  • complicazione
  • complicanza
  • piegare
  • Latin complico
  • French compliqué

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  3. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  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 d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  6. ^ 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. 16, 536
  7. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 3, 415
  8. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1038
  10. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse