gire

Forms

gire (no first-person singular present, first-person singular past historic gìi, past participle gìto, no subjunctive, no second-person singular imperative, auxiliary èssere)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *jīre, a variant of Latin īre (“to go”).^[2][3][4] Nocentini thinks the variant arose from the hiatus after words ending in a vowel.^[2] DELI, the DEI, GRADIT, Sabatini–Coletti and Zingarelli explain the ⟨g-⟩ instead by analogy with the first person plural Old Italian giamo “we go”, from Latin eāmus, Vulgar Latin *iāmus.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Earlier, Diez had proposed Latin *deīre (“to go down”), Caix a prosthetic palatal and Meyer-Lübke the spread of the palatal from the forms in ⟨e-⟩.^[9]

The same defective verb survives across Romance: Sicilian jiri, Romansh ir, the French future irai, and Catalan ir, Occitan ir, Spanish ir and Portuguese ir.^[10][2] The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey- (“to go”), the root of Ancient Greek εἶμι (eîmi).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a document from Molise of 1171.^[3] The verb is common in 13th-century verse: Cielo d'Alcamo writes A lo letto ne gimo a la bon'ora (“let us go to bed in good time”).^[4][12]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian gire had the full range of andare: to set out, to go towards a place, to frequent a place, to go in search of something.^[3] Dante uses it in the Commedia: Lasciammo il muro e gimmo inver lo mezzo (“we left the wall and went towards the middle”).^[12][6] Bembo already judged gire, gìa, gìo and gito words of verse, though Dante had used them in his prose.^[4] Tommaseo too calls it more a word of verse than of prose.^[13]

The verb has long gone out of use, but it is common in older literature, above all in poetry, and survives in the dialects.^[4][12] Leopardi still uses the participle gita.^[7]

Timeline

• 1171 – first record, in a document from Molise.^[3]
• About 1230–1250 – Giacomo da Lentini uses the infinitive as a noun, il gire “the going”.^[3]
• Before 1250 – Cielo d'Alcamo uses gimo.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (archaic, literary) To go, the same as andare or ire: Gimmo per la valle fino all'alba.^{[6][14][15][1]}
2. (literary, pronominal) girsene: to go away.^[8]

Word family

• gita

Related words

• ire
• andare
• Latin eō

Usage notes

Gire is defective.^[8][7] The dictionaries list giamo or gimo and gite in the present, givo or gia in the imperfect, gì, gimmo and girono in the past historic, girò in the future, gissi in the imperfect subjunctive, girei in the conditional and the past participle gito.^[8][7][14] Some of these forms are still used in a few regions.^[15][12] The nominalised infinitive il gire meant “the going” in Old Italian.^[3][13]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
4. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1816
6. ^ a b c De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 6, 844
13. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
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 Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)