credere

Forms

credere (first-person singular present crédo, first-person singular past historic credétti or (traditional) credètti or credéi, past participle credùto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian has the shortened forms cre’ and crê.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crēdō (“to trust, believe; to entrust”).^[3][4][5][1] The word is panromance: French croire, Occitan creire, Catalan creure, Spanish creer, Portuguese crer, Sardinian crere and Romanian crede.^[4][6] The DÉRom reconstructs a Proto-Romance verb meaning both “to believe” and “to lend”; the second sense survives only in the old stages of Italian, French, Francoprovençal, Occitan and Catalan, which it takes as the remnant of an old meaning.^[7]

The Latin verb is an old compound of Proto-Indo-European *ḱred- and *dʰeh₁- (“to put”), the root also of fare: “to place one's heart”, that is, to trust.^[8][4][1] Its closest relatives are Sanskrit श्रद्दधाति (śraddadhāti, “to trust, believe”) and Avestan zrazdā- (“trusting, believing”), and the Celtic word for believing, Welsh credu.^[4][8][1] Devoto calls it a very old word of the Indo-European priestly class, preserved only at the edges of the area, in Latin and Celtic and in Indo-Iranian.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the bilingual Contrasto of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, about 1190, in Genoese.^[2][4] DELI's first record of the sense “to hold true” is in Rustico di Filippo, before 1300.^[3]

Semantic evolution

DELI dates “to consider probable or advisable” to before 1294 (Brunetto Latini), absolute “to have faith in God” to before 1292 (Bono Giamboni), “to be certain that someone or something exists” to before 1306 (Iacopone), and “to judge, to deem” to 1304–1308 (Dante).^[3] The infinitive as a noun, “opinion”, is in Boccaccio in 1353.^[3] Old Italian also used it for “to entrust” and, in trade, “to give on credit”;^[2] German glauben copied this commercial sense as early as 1340.^[10]

Many Latin derivatives came into Italian by the learned route: credente, credibile, credito, creditore and credulo.^[3] Credenza, first “belief”, came to mean the tasting of a lord's food to show it was not poisoned, then the sideboard where the dishes were kept, recorded in 1518–1525 in Firenzuola.^[3][4] In the 1960s credibile and credibilità took on senses of English credible and credibility.^[3]

Timeline

• About 1190 – Raimbaut de Vaqueiras uses the verb in Genoese.^[2][4]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses it for “to have faith”.^[3]
• Before 1300 – Rustico di Filippo uses it for “to hold true”.^[3]
• 1304–1308 – Dante uses it for “to judge, to deem”.^[3]
• 1340 – German glauben is recorded in the commercial sense “to give on credit”.^[10]
• 1353 – Boccaccio uses il credere for “opinion”.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To believe, to be convinced that something is true: non credo a una parola di quello che dice.^[5][11][1]
2. To trust, to give credit to a person: credimi, è la verità.^[5]
3. credere in, to have faith in; to believe in God or in something's existence: crede nel destino.^[5][3]
4. To think, to suppose: credo che il negozio chiuda alle sette.^[5][1]
5. With a predicate, to consider: lo credevo più giovane.^[5]
6. credersi, to think oneself: si crede un genio.^[5][1]

Word family

• credente
• ricredere
• miscredente
• discredere

Related words

• credenza
• credibile
• credito
• credo
• credulo
• creditore
• incredibile
• credenziale

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include vedere per credere (seeing is believing), dare a credere (to make someone believe), oltre ogni credere (beyond belief) and non credere ai propri occhi (not to believe one's eyes).^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 k l 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 d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 122
10. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier