Etymologically
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cosa

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Pronunciation

  • Central and Southern Italy: /ˈkɔ.za/, /ˈkɔ.sa/[1]
  • Northern Italy: /ˈkɔ.za/[1]

Forms

cosa f (plural cose)[1] Old Italian forms include caosa, chosa, cossa and colsa.[2][3] The diphthong survives in the South and in parts of the North, as in Neapolitan caosa.[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin causa (“cause, reason; lawsuit”), which through the sense “affair, business” took the place of rēs (“thing”) in speech.[5][6][7][8] The Latin diphthong “au” became “o”, as in other popular words;[9] the learned form of the same word is causa.[1][6][9] The interrogative pronoun “cosa” “what” is a shortening of che cosa.[1][5]

The word is continued throughout Romance except in Romanian: French chose, Occitan causa, Catalan cosa, Spanish cosa, Portuguese cousa and Dalmatian kauza.[10][4][6][11] Körting notes that Latin “causa” was already used as a neutral word for “something” in Cassian.[12]

The Latin noun was spelt caussa in older inscriptions.[13][6] Its origin is uncertain: one proposal, which Nocentini thinks the most likely, takes it from a Proto-Italic *kaud-ta related to cūdō (“to strike”), with the original sense “blow, first push”;[6][13] Ernout and Meillet doubt any Indo-European origin.[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Genoese part of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras' Contrasto (c. 1190).[2] At the end of the 12th century the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio uses cosa for household goods and merchandise.[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian cosa already had its extremely general sense, “anything real or imagined”, as in Dante's “Temer si dee di sole quelle cose / c'hanno potenza di fare altrui male” (one should fear only those things that have the power to harm others, Inferno 2).[8][2] It also meant a material object, a person, a feeling, a quality, a deed, an event (1282, Ristoro d'Arezzo) and the subject of a speech, and in the plural public affairs (Brunetto Latini).[2][5] The old sense “cause, reason”, as in per questa cosa “for this reason”, lasted from Boccaccio's Fiammetta (1343–1344) into literary use.[4] Dante (1304–1308) uses it for a work of thought or literature.[5]

The masculine coso, a thing or person whose name one cannot or will not say, is a typically Tuscan word first found in Francesco Berni (before 1535), and cosa was used in the same way for a woman from Giovan Battista Fagiuoli (before 1742).[5] Cosa for che cosa has old literary examples and is common in speech, including Tuscan; many 19th-century grammarians accepted it, against the purists.[5] In 1990s journalism Cosa rossa named a left-wing political grouping still in the making.[8]

Timeline

  • c. 1190 – Raimbaut de Vaqueiras uses cosa in the Genoese verses of his Contrasto.[2]
  • Late 12th century – The Ritmo di Sant'Alessio uses it for “household goods”.[5]
  • 1282 – Ristoro d'Arezzo uses it for “event”.[5]
  • Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses it for “part of reality” and, in the plural, for “public affairs”.[5]
  • 1304–1308 – Dante uses it for “work of thought”.[5]
  • 1343–1344 – Boccaccio's Fiammetta uses it for “cause, reason”.[4]
  • Before 1535 – Francesco Berni uses the masculine coso.[5]
  • Before 1742 – Fagiuoli uses cosa for a woman whose name is not said.[5]
  • 1865 – The verb cosare is first recorded.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. thing: any object, concrete or abstract, real or imagined: in soffitta ci sono cose vecchissime.[7][14][15]
  2. (in the plural, with a possessive) One's belongings: metti in valigia le tue cose.[7][9][16]
  3. Something that happens or is done: a fact, event, matter: la cosa si è risolta da sola.[9][16]
  4. Something said, heard or known: mi ha raccontato cose interessanti.[7]
  5. Food: a cena preferisco cose semplici.[7]
  6. (law) Anything that can be the object of a legal right: cosa mobile, cosa giudicata.[15][16]
  7. (philosophy) cosa in sé, the thing-in-itself of Kant.[15][16][14]
  8. (colloquial) What's-her-name, a woman whose name one cannot remember or will not say.[7][1]
  9. (euphemistic, in the plural) le cose, menstruation.[7][15]

Pronoun

  1. (interrogative) what, short for che cosa: cosa fai stasera?.[9][1][5]

Word family

Usage notes

Fixed expressions include la cosa pubblica, the State,[15][17] per prima cosa, first of all,[15][16] and the proverb cosa fatta capo ha, what is done is done.[15] The s is voiced in the North and may be voiced or voiceless in Central and Southern Italy.[1][9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ^ Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it
  4. ^ a b c d Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 13, 386
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  6. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  7. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  8. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
  9. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  10. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1129
  11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  12. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  13. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  14. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  15. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  16. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  17. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli