evitare

Forms

evitare (first-person singular present èvito, first-person singular past historic evitài, past participle evitàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin ēvītō (“to avoid, shun”).^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is vītō (“to avoid”) with the prefix ē-, which here only strengthens the meaning.^[2][4][5][6] The same Latin word was taken into French éviter, recorded from 1350, and Spanish evitar.^[3][6]

The origin of the simple verb is uncertain.^[2] Walde and Hofmann explained it as “to go out of the way”, with a preverb meaning “apart”, but de Vaan objects that verbs of this type are recent and judges a link with Latin invītus (“unwilling”) and vīs (“you want”) formally more likely: he reconstructs Proto-Italic *wīto- (“wanted”), from Proto-Indo-European *uih₁-to- (“wished for”).^[7] Nocentini compares instead Old High German wīt (“far, wide”), the ancestor of German weit.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Memoriali bolognesi, documents copied at Bologna between 1279 and 1300, in the sense “to escape from something bad, to elude it”.^[8] DELI dates the word only from Savonarola's De regimine (before 1460), and points out that the sentence of fra Giordano quoted by the Crusca, Tommaseo and the GDLI, “Non si può la divina giustizia evitare” (divine justice cannot be escaped), is a forgery.^[2][9][10] Nocentini and GRADIT date it from 1483.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

In the Renaissance the verb was used of dangers and harm: Machiavelli writes of “quanti imminenti pericoli si evitavono” (how many imminent dangers were avoided).^[10][9] Tommaseo held it to be stronger than guardarsi: one may guard against a danger even while going to meet it, whereas evitare keeps away from it; in music, to avoid a cadence was to add a dissonance to the final chord so as to change key or prolong the phrase.^[9]

From keeping away from a thing or a person the verb came to mean abstaining from something (evitare il fumo), preventing something bad from happening, and sparing someone a trouble.^[4][11][5] The reflexive evitarsi is used both of people who avoid meeting each other and of sparing oneself an effort.^[5][12] The adjective evitabile appears before 1667 in Sforza Pallavicino, while inevitabile, from Latin inevitabilis, is older, from the first half of the 14th century.^[2][3]

Timeline

• 1279–1300 – Evitare is recorded in the Memoriali bolognesi.^[8]
• First half of the 14th century – Inevitabile is recorded.^[3]
• Before 1460 – Savonarola uses the verb in De regimine, DELI's first record.^[2]
• 1483 – The date of first record that Nocentini and GRADIT give.^[3][4]
• Before 1667 – Evitabile is recorded in Sforza Pallavicino.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To avoid, keep away from someone or something harmful or unpleasant: Da settimane evita il suo vecchio socio.^[4][11][12]
2. To abstain from something, also with di and an infinitive: Il medico mi ha detto di evitare i dolci.^[4][11][13]
3. To prevent something bad from happening: Una frenata improvvisa ha evitato lo scontro.^[4][12][5]
4. To spare someone something: Ti ho evitato una lunga attesa.^[4][11][13]
5. (reflexive evitarsi) Of two or more people, to keep from meeting one another: Da quando hanno litigato, le due vicine si evitano.^[12][5][13]

Word family

• evitabile
• inevitabile
• evitamento

Related words

• Latin ēvītō
• French éviter

Usage notes

The present is stressed on the first syllable, èvito; older and poetic usage stressed the second, evìto.^[11][5][13]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b c d e f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1572
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
9. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 5, 528
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana