coricare

Forms

coricare (first-person singular present còrico or córico, first-person singular past historic coricài, past participle coricàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] The old forms include Old Italian colcare, corcare, colicare and, in Venetian, colegar.^[2] The literary and regional corcare is still recorded beside coricare.^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin collocāre (“to place, set in position”), narrowed in Late Latin to “lay down, put to bed”.^[6][7][8][1] The Latin verb is formed from com- and locō (“to place”), itself from locus (“place”).^[7][4][8] The narrowing came through phrases with lectus (“bed”) meaning “to lie down on the bed”, found in the Vulgate.^[4][9] The same Latin word gave French coucher, Occitan colgar, Catalan colgar and Spanish colgar (where it means “to hang”), Sardinian colcare and Romanian culca.^[7][10][11] The origin of the Latin noun is unclear: de Vaan rejects the old derivation from a root meaning “to place” and leaves the question open.^[12]

The Italian form is not the direct Tuscan outcome: the early syncopated colcare became corcare by the change of /l/ to /r/ before a consonant, a form of northern origin that spread into Tuscan and the southern dialects;^{[9][1][4][11]} The standard form was then remade from it with an inserted /i/.^{[9][1][4][11]} Wiktionary and Devoto explain the /i/ by the influence of caricare “to load”.^[1][13] Meyer-Lübke likewise gives the word as an Old Lombard form taken into Italian.^[10] The learned doublet is collocare.^[1][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a Venetian text of the last quarter of the 12th century, the Proverbia que dicuntur super natura feminarum, with the reflexive colgarse “to lie down”, in the position of sleep or rest.^[2][11] Bono Giamboni uses the reflexive in 1292 for going to bed.^[6]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb meant to lay someone down to sleep or rest, and in the reflexive to go to bed; it also served for lying dead, for the pair of rising and going to bed that stands for a whole day or life, and, with an erotic sense, for sleeping with someone.^[2] It was also used of the sun and the stars going down, a sense Dante has and the modern dictionaries keep as literary.^[2][6][3] An old sense “to kneel, bow down” is quoted from the Tesoro, of camels kneeling to be loaded.^[14][15]

The transitive “put to bed” is dated by DELI only from 1641, and “lay down, lay flat” from 1708–1709.^[6] In agriculture the verb names the bending of a plant to the ground to bury part of it as a layer.^[16][3][8] In heraldry the participle coricato describes a chevron lying on its side and beasts lying with their heads raised.^[8] The northern dialects keep forms with /l/, such as Venetian colgarse and Romagnol culghêss.^[11]

Timeline

• 1175–1200 – Venetian colgarse is recorded in the Proverbia que dicuntur.^[2][11]
• 1275 – The date Zingarelli gives for coricare.^[15]
• 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses the reflexive for going to bed.^[6]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses the verb of the setting sun.^[6]
• 1495 – Mantuan colgare “lay on the ground” appears in a letter.^[11]
• 1641 – Giovanni Diodati uses the transitive “put to bed”.^[6]
• 1708–1709 – Lorenzo Magalotti uses it for “lay down, stretch out”.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To put someone to bed, to lay someone down: Coricò il bambino nella culla.^[16][3][15]
2. To lay something down flat, to set it horizontally: Hanno coricato le assi sul prato.^[16][3][5]
3. (agriculture) To bend a plant to the ground and bury part of it to make a layer (propaggine).^[16][3][8]
4. (reflexive, coricarsi) To go to bed: Stasera mi corico presto.^[3][4][15]
5. (reflexive) To lie down, stretch out; of a ship or car, to heel over on one side.^[4][5]
6. (literary, reflexive) Of the sun or a star, to set.^[16][3][4]

Word family

• coricamento
• ricoricare

Related words

• collocare
• Latin collocō
• French coucher

Usage notes

The usual form is the reflexive coricarsi “to go to bed”.^[3][8] The present is stressed on the first syllable, còrico, and the literary corcare has córco.^[3][1] With di botte or di mazzate the verb means to beat someone soundly.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 g h i j Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1109
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c d e f g Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 15, 859
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. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
15. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
16. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET