guastare

Forms

guastare (first-person singular present guàsto, first-person singular past historic guastài, past participle guastàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian also had vastare, with the Latin consonant.^[2][3] Old forms with ⟨g⟩ alone, such as Old Italian gasto, are found beside Old Italian ghuastare.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vastō (“to lay waste”), derived from vastus (“empty, desolate”).^[2][5][6][1] The initial /gw/ for Latin /w/ is the treatment of Germanic words such as guado and guaina.^[5][7][8] DELI, DEI and Wiktionary explain it by crossing with a Germanic word of the same root, Frankish *wōstijan (“to lay waste”) (Old High German wuosti (“desert”), modern wüst).^{[2][9][1][10]} Nocentini doubts the identification, because the Germanic word has /oː/ where the Romance word has /a/.^[5] Rohlfs counts the word among the few in which Latin /w/ was treated like Germanic /w/.^[11]

The same verb is French gâter, and Occitan gastar, Catalan gastar, Spanish gastar and Portuguese gastar.^[5][10]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *wāsto- and PIE *h₁u(e)h₂-sto- for the adjective, and notes that the length of the vowel is uncertain.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur, of the late 12th century, for damaging a thing so that it is no longer whole or sound.^[4] The Latin-looking vastare appears in the 13th century in Inghilfredi and the Miracole de Roma;^[2] DELI's first guastare, in Restoro d'Arezzo (1282), means “to reduce to a bad state”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb meant to lay waste a country or a town, as in Bono Giamboni before 1292, and the noun guasto the devastation; to mutilate (Dante); and in Boccaccio to corrupt.^[2][11][13] The military guastatore, who destroyed fortifications, is in Malispini and was revived in the Second World War.^[2]

Later uses are more domestic: food that goes off (Giovanni Villani), things that break, a mood or a friendship spoiled; in 1939–40 Palazzi records the sense of unpicking a garment to make it again.^[2][6] The old senses “to destroy” and “to put to death” are now obsolete.^[13][1] Phrases include guastare la festa, the source of guastafeste “spoilsport” (1618), and non guasta “it does no harm”.^[2][6]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – First record, in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur.^[4]
• 13th century – Vastare appears in Inghilfredi and the Miracole de Roma.^[2]
• 1280 – A Medieval Latin form of guastatore is recorded at Padua.^[2]
• 1282 – Restoro d'Arezzo uses guastare and guastarsi.^[2]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses the verb for destroying and guasto for devastation.^[2]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses guastatore and the verb for mutilating.^[2]
• 1348–1353 – Boccaccio uses it for corrupting.^[2]
• 1618 – Guastafeste is recorded.^[2]
• 1846 – Cesare Balbo uses guastarsi for falling out with someone.^[2]
• 1955 – Guasto “breakdown” is recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To break, make unusable: Mio fratello ha guastato la lavatrice.^[6][14][15]
2. To spoil, damage, ruin: L'umidità ha guastato i muri.^[6][14][15]
3. To harm the body or a bodily function: guastare la digestione.^[6][14]
4. To make food go bad.^[6][14][15]
5. (figurative) To corrupt, lead astray.^[6][15][1]
6. To mar, disfigure.^[6][16]
7. To disturb, upset; to break off a relationship; to wreck plans: guastare la festa.^[6][15][16]
8. Used absolutely, chiefly in the negative: to do harm: Un po' di prudenza non guasta.^[6][15]
9. To unpick a piece of knitting or a garment in order to remake it.^[6][17][1]
10. (obsolete) To lay waste, destroy; to mutilate; to put to death.^[6][17][1]
11. (pronominal, guastarsi) To break down, stop working; of food, to go bad; of weather or relations, to get worse.^[15][17]
12. (pronominal, guastarsi) Of a person, to become corrupted; of two people, to fall out.^[15][17][2]

Word family

• guasto
• guastafeste
• guastamestieri
• guastatore
• guastamento
• guastatura

Related words

• devastare
• vasto
• Latin vastō
• French gâter

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 539
4. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
5. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1888
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b c d e f g h Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
17. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana