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leggere

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈlɛd.d͡ʒe.re/[1]

Forms

leggere (first-person singular present lèggo, first-person singular past historic lèssi, past participle lètto, auxiliary avére)[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian legere, Old Italian lezere and Old Italian leggiare, a Sienese form, and an old past participle was Old Italian leggiuto.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin legō (“to gather, collect; to read”).[3][4][5][1] The GDLI calls it a learned word.[2] The Latin verb lives on in French lire, Occitan legir, Spanish leer and Portuguese ler.[4][6][1]

The first meaning of the Latin verb was “to gather, pick”, which survives in compounds such as colligō (“to gather”) and ēligō (“to choose”), the source of eleggere.[4][7] DELI calls the passage to “reading” obscure and suggests that it went through a liturgical and political use, or through the phrase ⟨legere oculis⟩ “to gather (the letters) with the eyes”;[3][8] Sabatini–Coletti favours the phrase.[3][8] De Vaan sees a shift from “collect” to “watch out for” and “concentrate on” and finally “read”, and Nocentini compares Ancient Greek λέγω (légō), which went from “to gather” to “to recount, say”.[7][4] Both go back to Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to collect”).[7][1]

The noun leggio “lectern” only looks like a derivative: DELI derives it from Ancient Greek λογεῖον (logeîon, “speaker's platform”), from the same Greek family, and the link with the verb is secondary.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form legere in the Breve di Montieri of 1219, and leggere follows in the 13th-century translation of the Tesoro; the sense is “to recognize words from written signs and understand them”.[3][4][5]

Semantic evolution

Early on the verb also meant “to study” (Iacopone, before 1306) and “to teach” from a chair, as in Dante (before 1321), a sense now archaic.[3][9] Dante also used it figuratively for reading someone's thoughts.[3] Leggere “to interpret signs” is recorded in Tasso (before 1595), “to interpret a passage” in Castelvetro (before 1571), and leggere la mano “to read someone's palm” in Federigo Tozzi (before 1920).[3] A southern phrase leggere la vita “to list someone's misdeeds” is recorded in Sicilian in 1752.[6]

Leggibile “readable” goes back to the 14th century.[3][4] DELI's first record of leggibilità is an 1883 letter of Rodolfo Renier mocking the word, while Nocentini dates it to 1856.[3][4] Leggicchiare and leggiucchiare “to read here and there” are recorded before 1744 and before 1850.[3]

Timeline

  • 1219 – Legere appears in the Breve di Montieri.[3]
  • 13th century – Leggere appears in the translation of the Tesoro.[3]
  • Before 1306 – Iacopone uses the verb for “to study”.[3]
  • Before 1321 – Dante uses it for “to teach”.[3]
  • 14th century – Leggibile is recorded.[3]
  • Before 1595 – Tasso uses it for interpreting signs.[3]
  • 1752 – Sicilian léjiri la vita is recorded.[6]
  • Before 1920 – Leggere la mano is recorded in Tozzi.[3]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To read, to recognize written signs and understand the words they form: Mio figlio ha imparato a leggere a cinque anni.[5][9][8]
  2. To read a text, to take in its content: Sto leggendo un romanzo di Calvino, leggere l'inglese, to be able to read English.[5][9][10]
  3. To learn something by reading: Ho letto sul giornale che chiudono la stazione.[5][9][11]
  4. To read habitually, to spend time reading: In vacanza leggo tantissimo.[5][9]
  5. To read aloud: La maestra ci leggeva una storia ogni venerdì.[5][9][8]
  6. To interpret a text or a work in a certain way; in philology, of a manuscript, to have a given reading.[5][9][10]
  7. To read conventional or natural signs: leggere una mappa, leggere il termometro.[9][8][10]
  8. (figurative) To guess, to see into: leggere nel pensiero, to read someone's mind, leggere tra le righe, to read between the lines, leggere la mano, to read palms.[5][12][10]
  9. (archaic or literary) To lecture, to teach from a chair.[9][12]

Word family

  • leggibile
  • leggibilità
  • illeggibile
  • leggicchiare
  • leggiucchiare
  • rileggere
  • letta

Usage notes

Principal parts: leggo, lessi, letto; the verb takes avere.[1][9] Leggere with the stress on the second syllable is an archaic form of leggero “light”.[1][13] The phrase per non saper né leggere né scrivere means “just to be on the safe side”.[5][9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 8, 903
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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 f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  6. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2194
  7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  8. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  10. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  11. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
  12. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET