lato

Forms

lato m (plural lati)^[1] Old Italian had a plural le latora, and in the 13th and 14th centuries a form latere.^[2][3] Northern Old Italian forms include là, lad and Genoese lao.^[4][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin latus (“side, flank”), a neuter noun with the stem ⟨later-⟩.^[4][5][6][2] Latin already used it in mathematics (Quintilian), and in Late Latin it became a preposition: “ad latus” “beside” is found in the 4th-century “Itinerarium Burdigalense”.^[4] The noun is panromance: Romanian latură, Sardinian ladu, Occitan latz, Spanish lado and Portuguese lado, and as a preposition Old French lez (“beside”), which survives in French place names such as Plessis-lez-Tours.^[5][7][2] The derivative allato (“beside”) goes back to the same prepositional use.^[7][2]

DELI describes the Latin word as limited to Italic and Celtic, and Nocentini and Devoto compare Old Irish leth (“side”) and Welsh lled (“half”).^[4][5][8] De Vaan finds no good etymology: the Celtic words point to a different form, and a link with Latin lateō (“to be hidden”), for the invisible side of the body, is another possibility.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a charter from the Marche of 1193, in the sense “side, part”.^[4][6][5] In 13th-century northern texts the word has the shortened forms là (the Laude), lad (Auliver's canzone) and lao (the Anonimo Genovese).^[4]

Semantic evolution

Dante uses the word for the sides of the body: the damned under the rain “make of one side a shield for the other” (de l'un de' lati fanno a l'altro schermo).^[10] In 13th-century Florentine aver da lato meant “to have to hand”, and in the 14th century the word could mean a branch of a family or a faction.^[2] The plural latera is common in Tuscan place names from the 11th century.^[2]

The geometrical sense, a side of a polygon, appears in Leonardo da Vinci around 1496, and the side of an angle in Vincenzo Scamozzi before 1616.^[4] The figurative sense “aspect” (il lato comico) and phrases such as da un lato … dall'altro are part of the modern word, and lato B, the B-side of a record, is also a joking name for the backside.^[6][3]

Timeline

• 1193 – A charter from the Marche has lato.^[4]
• 13th century – Northern texts have là, lad and lao.^[4]
• 13th–14th centuries – The plural latere is in use.^[2]
• c. 1496 – Leonardo da Vinci uses lato for the side of a polygon.^[4]
• 1556 – Daniele Barbaro uses it for the segment joining two vertices.^[4]
• Before 1616 – Vincenzo Scamozzi uses it for the side of an angle.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The right or left part of the body; the flank: Dorme sempre sul lato sinistro.^[6][11][3]
2. The right or left part of a thing, as against its front and back; the side of a building or a road: il lato nord della chiesa.^[6][3][11]
3. Each of the surfaces of an object or a mountain that rise from its base.^[6]
4. A part or direction defined in relation to a centre or a dividing line: Abita dall'altro lato del fiume.^[6][11]
5. An edge or border: i lati della piazza.^[6][3]
6. Each of the two faces of a thin flat object: il lato A di un disco.^[6][3]
7. (figurative) An aspect of a thing or a person: Cerca sempre il lato positivo.^[6][11]
8. (figurative) A branch of a family: un cugino dal lato materno.^[11][12]
9. (geometry) A segment joining two consecutive vertices of a polygon; each of the half-lines that bound an angle.^[3][11][4]

Word family

• dallato

Related words

• allato
• laterale
• Latin latus

Usage notes

Common phrases are a lato and di lato “at the side”, di lato a “beside”, and da un lato … dall'altro “on the one hand … on the other”.^[6][3] A second, literary lato means “broad, wide”: it is Latin lātus (“broad”), recorded in Bono Giamboni before 1292, and DELI quotes Aurelio Roncaglia that in the old writers it was a popular word, not a Latinism.^[4][5] Dante writes of the Harpies ali hanno late, e colli e visi umani (they have broad wings, and human necks and faces), and the adjective survives in the phrase in senso lato “in a broad sense” (1869).^[6][4] The GDLI also records an obsolete legal lato “promulgated”, from the past participle Latin lātus of Latin ferō (“to carry”), and an old name of a fish, from Greek.^[13][2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2177
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e 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 De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 254
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 8, 816
11. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
12. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975)
13. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 8, 819