mutare

Forms

mutare (first-person singular present mùto, first-person singular past historic mutài, past participle mutàto, auxiliary (transitive) avére or (intransitive) èssere)^[1] An old form with a voiced consonant, Old Italian mudare, is also recorded.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mūtō (“to change”), a verb that lived on in nearly all the Romance languages.^[3][4][5][1] The same word is Old French muer, Old Occitan mudar, Catalan mudar, Spanish mudar, Portuguese mudar, Sardinian mudare and Romanian muta.^[4][6] Zingarelli labels the Italian verb a learned word.^[7]

Nocentini traces Latin mūtō to the root Proto-Indo-European *mei-/*moi- (“to exchange”), which also gave migrō (“to move, migrate”), mūnus (“duty; gift”) and commūnis (“common”); the closest comparisons are Ancient Greek μοῖτος (moîtos, “requital”) and Latvian mitēt (“to change”) with mietus (“exchange”).^[4] Devoto took the verb as derived from an old noun *moitos of the Sicilian and early Latin tradition.^[8]

In its first sense the verb was pushed back by cambiare in Italian, and in French by changer, where muer kept mainly the sense “to moult”.^[6][9] From the Latin verb came the learned mutabile, mutazione and mutatore, and the plural of the gerundive, mutanda (“things to be changed”), gave mutande.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in the Breve di Montieri of 1219, with the sense “to transform”.^[3] The sense “to alter” follows in Guittone, before 1294, and the intransitive “to become different” in Latini.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The reflexive mutarsi “to be transformed” appears at the start of the 14th century in the Intelligenza, and the transitive sense “to replace one thing or person with another” in Cavalca, before 1342.^[3] Old Italian also used the verb for moving from one place to another, a sense now archaic.^[6][10][5]

Today mutare covers almost every sense of cambiare except that of exchanging money, but it sounds more literary, and phrases such as mutarsi d'abito are less common than those with cambiare.^[10] Of its derivatives, muta gained the sense of the periodic moult of animals in 1561 and that of a diving wetsuit by 1970,^[3] and mutazione became a term of biology after the Dutch scientist de Vries introduced the concept in 1901.^[3]

Timeline

• 1219 – The Breve di Montieri uses mutare for “to transform”.^[3]
• Before 1294 – Guittone uses it for “to alter”, and Latini as an intransitive verb.^[3]
• Early 14th century – The reflexive mutarsi appears in the Intelligenza.^[3]
• 14th century – Mutande “underpants” is recorded in a vernacular Bible.^[3]
• Before 1342 – Cavalca uses mutare for replacing one thing with another.^[3]
• 1561 – The noun muta is recorded for the moult of animals.^[3]
• 1917 – Mutazione in the biological sense enters an Italian dictionary.^[3]
• 2020 – Devoto–Oli records mutare “to mute”, from English.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To change, to replace one thing or person with another: mutare casa, mutare parere.^[5][11][12]
2. (transitive) To transform someone or something, to make different in body or mind: la guerra l'ha mutato.^[5][11][13]
3. (transitive, of animals) To moult: mutare le penne, mutare la pelle.^[5][7]
4. (transitive, archaic, literary) To move from one place to another;^[5][10][7] mutare il vino, to rack wine.^[5][10][7]
5. (intransitive) To become different, to pass to another state, also with di: il clima è mutato, mutare d'idea.^[5][11][12]
6. (intransitive, literary) To alternate, to follow one another, especially as a noun: il mutare dei giorni.^[5][11][7]
7. (pronominal, mutarsi) To turn into something else: l'acqua si mutò in vapore.^[7][11][14]
8. (pronominal, mutarsi, uncommon) To change one's clothes.^[14][7]

Word family

• muta
• mutamento
• mutabile
• mutabilità
• immutabile
• immutabilità
• mutande
• mutandoni
• mutatore
• mutazione
• mutageno
• mutevole
• mutevolezza

Related words

• commutare
• permutare
• migrare
• comune
• Latin mūtō

Usage notes

Set phrases include mutare bandiera, mutare casacca and mutare gabbana (to change sides), and mutare registro (to change one's tone).^[5][11] Since about 2020 mutare has also been used for “to mute”, to silence a microphone or a video on a device or online platform; it is taken from English, or formed from muto on the English model.^[11][1] The GDLI also records a technical mutare of wine-making, to stop the fermentation of must, from French muter.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 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 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 291
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
14. ^ a b Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli