futuro

Forms

futuro (feminine futura, masculine plural futuri, feminine plural future, adverb futuramente)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin futūrus (“about to be”), the future participle of sum (“to be”), built on the stem of the perfect fuī (“I was”); the noun follows futūrum (“what is to be”).^[2][3][4][5] The same Latin word gave French futur, the source of English future, and Spanish futuro.^[3]

De Vaan derives the stem ⟨fu-⟩ from an Indo-European aorist meaning “to become”, Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH-, and the participle from *bʰh₂u-tó-; its relatives include Ancient Greek φύω (phúō, “to bring forth, grow”), Sanskrit भवति (bhávati, “becomes, is”) and Lithuanian būti (“to be”).^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is Brunetto Latini's Rettorica of about 1260–1261, which speaks of the future things on which a man takes counsel: “Sopra le cose future prende l'uomo consiglio”.^[7][8] DELI dates both the adjective, “that will be”, and the noun, “the time to come”, to Latini.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Dante's harpies foretold “futuro danno” (harm to come) to the Trojans, and Petrarch set the present, past and future things that make war on him side by side.^[8] The grammatical future tense is named before 1416, by Federico Frezzi.^[2] In the plural, i futuri meant posterity, a use the TLIO already records.^[7][4]

Futuribile, what may happen, goes back to a Latin coinage of Luis de Molina in the controversies over grace, and is recorded in Italian before 1873.^[2][3] Futurismo, used once by Vincenzo Gioberti in 1843 for a sense of the future, took its modern meaning from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's manifesto in Le Figaro of 20 February 1909; the Catalan writer Gabriel Alomar had used the word for anti-traditionalism in 1904.^[2] Futurologia followed in 1970.^[3]

Timeline

• About 1260–1261 – Brunetto Latini uses future in his Rettorica.^[7]
• Before 1416 – Federico Frezzi uses futuro for the verb tense.^[2]
• 1843 – Vincenzo Gioberti uses futurismo for a sense of the future.^[2]
• Before 1873 – Futuribile appears in Raffaello Lambruschini.^[2]
• 1909 – Marinetti launches futurismo and futurista.^[2]
• 1970 – Futurologia is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. future, coming: negli anni futuri, la vita futura, the afterlife.^[4][9][10]
2. Future, to-be, of a person: il futuro sindaco.^[4][11][9]
3. (grammar) Future, of a tense.^[12][11][10]

Noun

1. The future, the time to come and what it will bring: Nessuno può sapere il futuro.^[4][12][11]
2. prospects, the future of a person or thing: un'azienda senza futuro.^[4][12]
3. (grammar) The future tense: futuro semplice, futuro anteriore.^[4][9][10]
4. (rare, plural) posterity.^[4][9][13]

Word family

• futurismo
• futurista
• futuribile
• futurologia
• futurologo
• futuramente

Related words

• futuristico
• essere
• Latin futūrus
• French futur

Usage notes

Common phrases are in futuro (in future), a futura memoria (for the record) and the proverb il futuro è sulle ginocchia di Giove, only the gods know what will happen.^[4][9][13] Besides its use for the time to come, the Italian future tense often expresses a guess about the present, as in saranno le dieci.^[12][9]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
8. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 6, 512
9. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
11. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli