mercatare

Forms

mercatare (first-person singular present mercàto, first-person singular past historic mercatài, past participle mercatàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] An old variant is mercadare.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *mercātāre, a verb formed from Latin mercātus (“trade; market”).^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} GDLI gives the source as Late Latin mercatare (“to carry on trade”), formed from the classical noun.^[2] DEI also derives it from the Latin noun.^[9]

The Latin noun is properly the past participle of mercor (“to trade”), from merx (“goods”), and gave Italian mercato.^[10] De Vaan traces all these to Proto-Italic *merk- (“trade, exchange”), a stem also found in Faliscan and Oscan.^[11] He reports Walde and Hofmann's view that the god's name Latin Mercurius was borrowed from Etruscan, and notes that in principle the whole stem could be Etruscan too.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Zingarelli dates the first record to about 1257, and GRADIT and Devoto–Oli to the second half of the 13th century.^[5][12][3] The sense was “to trade, to carry on business”: Bonagiunta warns that Accatt’a lo mercato molto caro / l’om che di mercatar non à intendanza, “the man who has no understanding of trading buys very dear at the market”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Brunetto Latini, Bono Giamboni and Francesco da Barberino use the verb for buying and selling for profit, and Bencivenni says that the townsman “looks to trading, to gaining and to amassing”.^[2][7] Boccaccio, in the Proem of the Decameron, names trading among the pastimes open to men and not to women.^[2][13] Davanzati defined mercatare o contrattare as giving so much of one thing to get so much of another.^[2][13]

Tommaseo also records a transitive use, “to set the price of goods, to bargain for”.^[13] Tommaseo already marked the verb as obsolete, and GRADIT, Devoto–Oli and Zingarelli list it as archaic.^{[13][12][3][5]} Its present participle survived as mercatante, an old word for a merchant.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1257 – Mercatare is first recorded.^[5]
• Second half of the 13th century – Its first record according to GRADIT and Devoto–Oli.^[12][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (archaic, intransitive) To trade, to work as a merchant, to deal in goods: Il giovane mercatava in panni tra Firenze e Bruges.^{[12][3][4][5][14][1]}
2. (archaic) To bargain, to haggle.^[12][14]
3. (archaic, transitive) To buy or sell goods at an agreed price.^[12][13]

Word family

• mercatante
• mercatabile

Related words

• mercato
• mercante
• mercanteggiare
• Latin mercātus

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
3. ^ a b c d e 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 Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
7. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 278
9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2427
10. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c d e Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana