mercato

Forms

mercato m (plural mercati)^[1] An old feminine plural mercata is recorded.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mercātus (“trade; market, fair”), an action noun from mercor (“to trade, to buy”), itself from merx (“goods, merchandise”).^[4][5][6][1] The same word is French marché, Occitan mercat, Catalan mercat, Spanish mercado and Portuguese mercado.^[5][7][8] It passed early into the Germanic languages: Old High German markāt, whence German Markt and English market.^[5]

De Vaan traces the Latin noun to Proto-Italic *merk- (“trade, exchange”), also found in Faliscan and Oscan; the god Mercury was probably the god of exchange, and the whole stem may have been borrowed from Etruscan.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Florentine account books of 1211, for a place where sellers gather with their goods to trade.^[4][5] GRADIT dates the word to before 1294.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Giovanni Villani (before 1348) uses mercato for a periodic gathering of traders, and Catherine of Siena (before 1380) already uses it scornfully for illicit traffic.^[4] In Dante's Paradiso the Caponsacchi family had already come down into the mercato of Florence.^[3] The economic senses came later: the movement of dealings (before 1535, Berni), libero mercato “free market” (1771, Pietro Verri), and the whole of a country's trade (1836).^[4] Since 1678 a mercato is also a noisy, chaotic place.^[4]

The Romance phrase a buon mercato “cheaply” is shared with French bon marché.^[7][10] Mercato nero, recorded in 1947, came out of the Second World War and was spread from Germany, where Schwarzmarkt named the illicit trade done at night.^[5] French has borrowed mercato for the transfer market in football.^[1]

Timeline

• 1211 – Mercato appears in Florentine account books.^[4][5]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani uses it for a periodic market.^[4]
• Before 1380 – Catherine of Siena uses it for illicit traffic.^[4]
• 1678 – The sense “place of great confusion” is recorded.^[4]
• 1771 – Pietro Verri writes libero mercato.^[4]
• 1836 – The sense “a country's whole trade” appears in the Milanese press.^[4]
• 1947 – Mercato nero is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A market, a place, often in the open air, where goods are bought and sold: Il sabato compro la frutta al mercato.^[10][11][12]
2. A periodic gathering of sellers and buyers for particular goods: il mercato del bestiame.^[10][13][2]
3. (economics) The meeting of supply and demand for a good, and the dealings that set its price; the market as a system: economia di mercato, market economy.^[10][13][14]
4. The trade in a given product or area: il mercato dell'auto, il mercato interno.^[10][13]
5. (figurative) A noisy, chaotic place: Quest'aula è diventata un mercato!^[10][11][13]
6. (derogatory) Shameful traffic in what should not be sold.^[13][14]

Word family

• mercatino
• mercatale
• mercatura
• mercatistica
• supermercato
• ipermercato
• soprammercato

Related words

• merce
• mercante
• mercanzia
• commercio
• Latin mercātus
• French marché
• English market

Usage notes

Common phrases: a buon mercato “cheap, cheaply”, also figuratively cavarsela a buon mercato “to get off lightly”;^[2][11][12] mercato nero “black market”;^[2][11][12] mercato delle pulci “flea market”, a translation of French marché aux puces.^[2][11][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 f g Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
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. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
13. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli