mescere

Forms

mescere or mèscere (first-person singular present mésco or mèsco, first-person singular past historic mescétti or (traditional) mescètti or mescéi, past participle mesciùto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian mesciere and Old Italian misciere.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *mĭscere, the Late Latin form of Latin miscēre (“to mix”), moved from the second conjugation to the third.^[3][4][5][6] The first sense was “to mix”;^[7] “to pour a drink” comes from the Roman custom of mixing wine with water before drinking it.^[7]

The same verb is Old Occitan meiser (“to pour”), Spanish mecer (“to stir; to rock”) and Portuguese mexer (“to stir”), and the obsolete Romanian mește (“to pour a drink”).^[4][8][1] Battisti and Alessio take the forms of Romanian, Occitan and Old Norman as evidence that the type with a short ⟨e⟩ is old.^[9] German mischen is a borrowing according to Meyer-Lübke and Battisti and Alessio, probably first used of wine.^[8][9]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *mei̯ḱ- (“to mix”) with the suffix ⟨-sk-⟩, from Proto-Italic *mik-sk-e/o-.^[10][4] Its cognates include Ancient Greek μείγνυμι (meígnumi, “to mix”) and μίσγω (místgō), Old Irish mescaid, Lithuanian maišyti, Old Church Slavonic мѣсити (měsiti) and Old English miscian.^[10] De Vaan counts the Old English and Old High German verbs as cognates, where the Romanists see a loan from Latin.^[10][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is first recorded before 1292 in B. Giamboni, in the literary sense “to mix”: lime is to be mixed together into a mortar.^[3][2] The sense “to pour a drink” appears in the 14th century, in the vernacular Bible and in Dante.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Dante uses the drink sense figuratively in the Paradiso: Cacciaguida bids him speak his thirst, so that one may pour for him (sì che l'uom ti mesca).^[7] Boccaccio has a servant boast that he pours as well as anyone, and the vernacular Bible renders Latin propinavi with mescei.^[11]

The old sense lived on in poetry: Petrarch, Bembo and Tasso use it of mixing things or qualities, and Tasso's wizard “mixes sulphur and pitch”.^[2][7] The phrase mescere battaglia “to join battle”, a Latinism, is rare and old.^[7][5] Today the verb is uncommon and mostly literary or Tuscan, used above all of wine, with the jocular sense “to hand out freely” (mescere mance).^[12][13][6]

Its derivatives belong to the drink sense: mescitore, the person who pours, is recorded before 1342 and in the statutes of the Florentine wine-sellers of 1339–64, and mescita, a Tuscan word for a wine shop, in 1846.^[3]

Timeline

• Before 1292 – B. Giamboni uses mescere “to mix”.^[3]
• 14th century – The sense “to pour a drink” appears in the vernacular Bible and in Dante.^[3]
• 1339–1364 – Mescitore is used of a wine server in the statutes of the wine-sellers' guild.^[3]
• 1846 – Carena records Tuscan mescita “wine shop”.^[3]
• 1942 – Mescita “pouring” enters the dictionaries.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To pour a drink, especially wine, into a glass: mescere il vino agli ospiti.^[12][6][14]
2. (absolute) To pour wine for others, to serve drink.^[12][5]
3. (figurative, jocular) To give out freely: mescere mance.^[12][6]
4. (literary) To mix or blend things together.^[12][14][13]
5. (Tuscan, rare) mescere le carte: to deal the cards.^[12][5]
6. (archaic) mescere battaglia: to join battle.^[12][6]

Word family

• mescita
• mescitore
• rimescere
• mescino

Related words

• mescolare
• mischiare
• misto
• mistura
• Latin misceō

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 f g h i 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2433
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
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 Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana