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Etymology and origin of the Italian word ieri

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1300–1313, Dante
Inherited from
Latin heri
Ultimate origin
Proto-Italic *χes-i
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin heri
French hier
Italian ieri

Pronunciation

  • /ˈjɛ.ri/[1]
  • Regional: /ˈje.ri/[1]

Forms

ieri (invariable); as a noun m (invariable). Older and poetic forms are ier and jeri.[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin heri (“yesterday”).[3][4][5][1] The word is found throughout the Romance languages: French hier, Occitan er, Catalan ahir, Spanish ayer, Sardinian eris and Romanian ieri;[4][6] Old Portuguese had eire, which modern Portuguese has replaced with ontem.[4][6] Many Italian dialects, like Spanish, added the preposition ⟨ad⟩: northern ⟨aier⟩, southern ⟨aieri⟩, Emilian ayer in Bologna and Neapolitan ayere.[7][6]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *xesi.[8] De Vaan compares Ancient Greek χθές (khthés), Sanskrit ह्यस् (hyás) and Old High German gesteron, and sets up Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰ-di-es (“yesterday”), perhaps “on that day”, with the stem of the word for day;[8][4] Nocentini gives the older reconstruction *ghesi.[8][4] Latin ⟨heri⟩ is a locative, and its adjective hesternus (“of yesterday”) matches the Germanic forms.[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Dante's Commedia, 1300–1313, always in the shortened form ier.[3] GDLI quotes Inferno XXI: “Ier, più oltre cinq'ore che quest'otta, mille dugento con sessanta sei anni compiè che qui la via fu rotta” (yesterday, five hours later than this hour, it was 1266 years since the road here was broken).[9]

Semantic evolution

As a noun, “the day before”, the word appears in Petrarch in 1374, and in the wider sense of “the past, former times” in Boccaccio, before 1375.[3] Compounds such as iersera “last night”, iermattina and ierlaltro “the day before yesterday” are formed with the word.[7][6] The phrase nato ieri, of a naive person, gained ground from the 1951 film Nata ieri, in which Judy Holliday played a pretty but foolish young woman.[3]

Timeline

  • 1300–1313 – Dante uses ier in the Commedia.[3]
  • 1374 – Petrarch uses ieri as a noun.[3]
  • Before 1375 – Boccaccio uses it for times past.[3]
  • 1951 – the film Nata ieri spreads the phrase nato ieri.[3]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. yesterday, on the day before today: Ieri ha nevicato tutto il giorno.[5][10][11]
  2. In the recent past: Ieri era un ragazzo, oggi è un uomo.[10][11]

Noun

  1. The day before today (often after a preposition): la partita di ieri, da ieri.[5][10][12]
  2. (by extension) The recent past: la musica di ieri.[5][10][13]

Word family

  • iersera
  • altrieri

Usage notes

Fixed expressions include l'altro ieri or ieri l'altro “the day before yesterday”, ieri sera, ieri mattina, ieri a otto “a week ago yesterday” and nato ieri “naive”: non sono mica nato ieri.[5][13][12] As a noun it takes the article lo, usually elided: l'ieri.[13] The traditional pronunciation has an open e, the northern one a close e.[14]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  4. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  5. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  6. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  7. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1926
  8. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  9. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 7, 232
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  12. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  13. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  14. ^ Canepari, Luciano, DiPI: Dizionario di pronuncia italiana, online ed., dipionline.it

Related etymologies

  • no · also from Latin
  • cosa · also from Latin
  • a · also from Latin
  • mio · also from Latin
  • uno · also from Latin
  • si · also from Latin
  • sapere · also from Latin
  • fare · also from Latin
Cite this entry

“Ieri.” Etymologically, 21 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/it/ieri. Accessed 22 Oct. 2026.

Last edited on . ·