oscuro

Forms

oscuro (feminine oscura, masculine plural oscuri, feminine plural oscure, diminutive oscurétto)^[1] Old Italian also wrote obscuro and uscuro.^[2] The popular form scuro is the same word.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin obscūrus (“dark; obscure”), a learned word.^{[5][3][6][7][2]} The more popular scuro continues the same Latin adjective.^[3][8] The Latin word is learned in French obscur and Spanish obscuro too;^[3][9] Körting lists Old French oscur and Portuguese escuro.^[3][9] DEI calls the Latin adjective western pan-Romance.^[8]

DELI calls the Latin word hard to analyse, though the part ⟨-scūrus⟩ has several matches in the Indo-European languages.^[5] Nocentini takes it from the root Proto-Indo-European *skeu- (“to cover”) with the prefix ob-, first said of an overcast sky, and compares Old High German scūr (“barn, shed”) and Old Norse ský (“cloud”), the source of English sky.^[3] De Vaan notes that it is disputed whether the word was cut ⟨ob-scūrus⟩ or ⟨obs-cūrus⟩; he tentatively sets up Proto-Italic *skoiro- from a form meaning “dark, shaded”, with no exact cognate.^[10] Wiktionary follows a similar reconstruction, Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃i-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Zingarelli dates the word before 1257; one of the oldest examples in the GDLI is the northern poet Ugo di Perso, who names walking in cloudy weather (temp oscur) among his annoyances.^[7][2] Bono Giamboni, before 1292, laments “in the depth of a dark night” and uses the word for what is hard to understand.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

Dante's Commedia (1300–1313) opens with the selva oscura, the dark wood, and also uses oscuro as a noun for darkness.^[5][2][11] Boccaccio has it for black mourning clothes and for a person of no renown, Petrarch for a grim, sullen look.^[5] Later senses are “opaque” (Galileo) and “deep, dark in colour” (1565).^[5] In the colour sense scuro is now the usual word.^[12]

In the 19th century the noun took the figurative sense “ignorance”, and the phrase essere all'oscuro di, “to know nothing about”, is recorded from Fortiguerri.^[5][11] The derivatives oscurantismo and oscurantista follow French obscurantisme and obscurantiste;^[5][3] DELI notes that the words seem to have arisen in the circles of the French Enlightenment that they were aimed at.^[5][3] Oscuramento got the wartime sense “blackout” from 1939.^[5]

Timeline

• Before 1257 – Oscuro is first recorded.^[7]
• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses it for poorly lit and for hard to understand.^[5]
• 1300–1313 – Dante's selva oscura, oscuro as a noun “darkness”.^[5]
• 1348–1353 – Boccaccio uses it for black mourning clothes.^[5]
• 1374 – Petrarch uses it for grim, sullen.^[5]
• Before 1375 – Boccaccio uses it for a person of no renown.^[5]
• 1836 – Oscurantismo is recorded, after French obscurantisme.^[5]
• 1869 – Tommaseo records the noun for “ignorance”.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Without light or with little light; dark: Il sentiero diventava oscuro tra gli alberi.^[6][12][7]
2. (uncommon) Of a colour, deep, tending to black (more often scuro).^[6][12][13]
3. (figurative) Hard to understand or interpret; of a writer, unclear: un passo oscuro del trattato.^[6][12][14]
4. Not fully known and so disquieting; mysterious, suspicious: Restano molti lati oscuri nella vicenda.^[6][12][15]
5. Uncertain and unfavourable: Per l'azienda si prospetta un futuro oscuro.^[6][12]
6. Of a historical period, marked by decline or poorly documented: i secoli oscuri.^[6][12][13]
7. Little known, not famous; of origins, humble: un oscuro funzionario di provincia.^[6][7][15]
8. (literary) Of a face or mood, gloomy, sullen.^[7][15][13]

Noun

1. Darkness: Ci siamo trovati all'oscuro quando è saltata la luce.^[1][7][15]
2. (figurative) Ignorance of something, in essere all'oscuro di “to know nothing about” and tenere all'oscuro “to keep in the dark”.^[7][15]

Word family

• oscurabile
• oscuramento
• oscurantismo
• oscurantista
• oscurare
• oscurità
• oscuramente
• oscurezza

Related words

• Latin obscurus
• French obscur

Usage notes

Camera oscura is the photographic darkroom and also the camera obscura.^[15][7] Materia oscura is dark matter in astrophysics.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 717
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2690
9. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
14. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ a b c d e f Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana