faticare

Forms

faticare (first-person singular present fatìco, first-person singular past historic faticài, past participle faticàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian also had fatigare, and northern texts fadigare and fadigar.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fatīgāre (“to tire out, wear out”).^[5][4][1] The voiceless /k/ in place of /ɡ/ is a hypercorrection: Tuscan reacted against what it took for northern softening of /k/ to /ɡ/, helped by the many verbs in ⟨-icare⟩.^[5][6] GRADIT instead treats it as formed from fatica with -are, and Treccani derives the intransitive sense from the noun and the old transitive one from the Latin verb.^[7][8] The inherited forms elsewhere are Occitan fadigar and Catalan fadigar; French fatiguer and Spanish fatigar are learned.^[5][9]

The Latin verb is built on a noun *fatis “exhaustion”, kept in Latin affatim (“amply, sufficiently”);^[10] Dunkel explains the verb as *fati- plus the root of Latin agō (“to drive”).^[10] Nocentini and Devoto read the noun as “crack, cleft”, the base also of Latin fatīscō (“to split open; to grow weary”), so that the verb first meant roughly “to make burst”.^[5][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in Guido Faba's Parlamenti, Bologna, about 1243;^[2][12] DELI's is Bono Giamboni, before 1292, with the sense “to work hard”.^[2][12] Giamboni writes that the lesser tribune “is elected only to toil”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was both intransitive, “to spend one's strength, labour, suffer”, and transitive, “to wear out, distress, burden”: Boccaccio's winds faticarono la nave “battered the ship”.^[2][14] The transitive use is now archaic, taken over by affaticare, and so is the pronominal faticarsi.^[8][3]

Modern Italian uses it for hard work and for difficulty: faticare a capire “to struggle to understand”.^[7][8] In the south it is the ordinary word for “to work”, and ha finito di faticare is said of someone who dies after a life of toil.^[4][7]

Timeline

• c. 1243 – Guido Faba's Parlamenti (Bologna) has the verb.^[2]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses faticare “to work hard”, and fatica and faticoso appear.^[12]
• Late 14th century – the noun fatigata “great effort” is recorded.^[12]
• 1680 – fatigatore “hard worker” is recorded.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To toil, work hard, make a great effort: I muratori hanno faticato tutta la mattina sotto il sole.^[7][4][6]
2. (intransitive, + a or per + infinitive) To struggle, find it hard to do something: Fatico a ricordare i nomi.^[7][4][3]
3. (regional, southern) To work.^[4][7]
4. (transitive, archaic) To tire, wear out; to torment, afflict.^[7][3][8]

Word family

• fatica
• faticoso
• affaticare
• sfaticato
• faticata
• faticatore
• infaticabile
• faticante

Related words

• faticaccia
• fatiscente
• Latin fatīgō
• French fatiguer

References

1. ^ a b c 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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ a b c d e f 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
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 d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b c d e Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 5, 719
14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET