incontrare

Forms

incontrare (first-person singular present incóntro, first-person singular past historic incontrài, past participle incontràto, auxiliary (transitive) avére or (intransitive) èssere)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin incontrāre, a verb formed in late antiquity from the adverb incontrā (“towards, facing”).^[2][3][4] DELI finds the verb in the Itala, the old Latin Bible translation, around the 3rd century AD, while Nocentini treats it as an unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb.^[2][5] The adverb itself is in (“in”) added to contrā (“against, opposite”); it lives on in incontro “towards” and was probably already a spoken word in the Pompeian inscriptions.^[5][6][2]

The same verb is Old French encontrer (now French rencontrer), Occitan encontrar, Catalan encontrar, Spanish encontrar and Portuguese encontrar;^[5][7] Meyer-Lübke thought the Spanish and Portuguese verbs came from Catalan.^[5][7] The noun meaning “meeting” is a back-formation from the verb.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest record, in the form emcontrare, is in the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio of the late 12th century, where the saint goes unrecognized by everyone he meets on his way; the form incontrare is in Brunetto Latini before 1294.^[2][3][8] In Dante the most frequent use is the impersonal present incontra “it happens”, followed by a clause.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The first meaning, “to find before one, by chance or on purpose”, has stayed the main one.^[2][3] The reflexive incontrarsi “to come upon” is found in the 14th-century Gospel translations, and the reciprocal meaning “to clash, fight” already in Dante; the reciprocal “to see each other, meet by arrangement” is recorded only in 1887.^[2] From the 17th century the verb also meant “to have in front of one”, and in the 19th it took the sense “to find favour, be successful”: Manzoni in 1827 listed incontrare “to please, win applause” among the Lombard usages missing from the dictionaries.^[2] The sports sense “to play against an opponent” is recorded in 1957.^[2]

In geometry the verb is used of a line or figure that has one or more points in common with another, and in sailing it meant to check a boat's turn by putting the helm over quickly.^[3][9] The old sense “to happen” survives only in literary use.^[10][11]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – emcontrare appears in the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses incontrare.^[2]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses the reciprocal form for “to clash”.^[2]
• 14th century – the Gospel translations use incontrarsi “to come upon”.^[2]
• 1530 – Pietro Bembo uses the noun incontro “meeting”.^[2]
• 1653 – Daniello Bartoli uses the verb for “to have in front of one”.^[2]
• 1887 – Petrocchi records the sense “to meet by arrangement”.^[2]
• 1957 – the sports sense is recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To meet someone by chance, to run into: Ieri ho incontrato la mia maestra al mercato.^[3][10][4]
2. (transitive) To meet someone by arrangement, especially officially: Il sindaco incontrerà i commercianti venerdì.^[3][10][4]
3. (transitive) To get to know someone, to come across a person in one's life.^[3][10]
4. (transitive) To come up against something, to encounter: incontrare difficoltà.^[3][4][9]
5. (transitive, sports) To play or fight against an opponent.^[3][10][9]
6. (transitive) To win approval: incontrare il favore del pubblico; used alone, to be successful.^[3][10][11]
7. (transitive, geometry) To intersect, have one or more points in common with another figure.^[3][10][9]
8. (intransitive, literary) To happen.^[10][11][9]

Word family

• incontro
• incontrarsi
• rincontrare
• scontrare
• scontro
• riscontrare
• riscontro
• scontrino
• scontroso

Related words

• contro
• Latin contrā
• French rencontrer

Usage notes

The reciprocal incontrarsi is the usual way to say “to meet (each other)”: ci incontriamo davanti alla stazione “we're meeting outside the station”.^[4][9] The phrase fare un brutto incontro means to run into criminals on one's way.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
9. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana