pendere

Forms

pendere (first-person singular present pèndo, first-person singular past historic pendétti or (traditional) pendètti or pendéi, past participle (rare) pendùto, auxiliary avére)^[1] An old form pàndere is recorded.^[2] The past participle, rare today, is penduto.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pĕndere, the Vulgar Latin form of Latin pendēre (“to hang, be suspended”), which took the conjugation of pendĕre (“to hang up; weigh”).^{[5][6][7][1][8]} The verb is found in all the Romance languages except Romanian: French pendre, Occitan pendre, Spanish pender and Portuguese pender.^[9][6][10]

The first Latin verb was the stative “to be hanging”, the second the transitive “to make hang”, hence “to weigh” and “to pay”, the source of pesare and pensare.^[6][11] Both go back to Proto-Italic *pendēō and Proto-Italic *pend-e/o- (“to hang”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- (“to pull; to spin”).^[11][1] Most handbooks see a variant of the root “to spin”, with a sense shift from spinning to stretching a thread and leaving something hanging;^[11][6] Nocentini compares German spinnen (“to spin”) and Lithuanian pinti (“to braid”).^[11][6] Devoto found no reliable connections outside Latin.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Dante, before 1321, in the sense “to hang, to be suspended from something”: in the Inferno a pouch hangs from the neck of each usurer (dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca).^[5][2] GRADIT dates the verb before 1313, and Nocentini to the 13th century.^[7][6] Dante also uses it in the sense “to lean, to slope”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Figurative senses followed soon: “to tend, to incline” towards a party or opinion (before 1342, Cavalca), “to be undecided, pending” (1353, Boccaccio) and “to loom, to threaten” (14th or 15th century).^[5] Old Italian also used it for “to depend”, as in Petrarch's line on one whose well-being hangs on the poet's life (la cui salute dal mio viver pende).^[7][13] A colour or taste could pendere towards another, “to verge on”.^[13][4]

The participle pendente became a noun for a pendant or earring about 1311, and pendenza took the technical sense of a gradient in 1586 and the legal sense of a pending case in 1551.^[5] In 1630–31 Galileo turned the adjective pendolo “hanging” into the scientific name of the pendulum.^[5]

Timeline

• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses pendente “hanging”.^[5]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses pendere “to hang” and “to lean”.^[5]
• Before 1342 – Domenico Cavalca uses the sense “to incline towards”.^[5]
• 1353 – Boccaccio uses the sense “to be pending”.^[5]
• 1551 – Pendenza “pending case” is recorded in Tuscan edicts.^[5]
• 1586 – Egnazio Danti uses pendenza “gradient”.^[5]
• 1630–1631 – Galileo uses pendolo “pendulum”.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To hang, to be suspended from something, with da: Un'altalena pendeva dal ramo.;^[7][3][8] pendere dalle labbra di qualcuno, to listen to someone with rapt attention.^[7][3][8]
2. (intransitive, figurative) To loom, to hang over someone, with su: Su di loro pende una condanna.^[7][3][14]
3. (intransitive) To lean, to slope, to be tilted: La mensola pende a sinistra.^[7][3][4]
4. (intransitive, figurative) To incline towards an opinion or a side; to verge on a quality: un rosso che pende all'arancione.^[7][3][4]
5. (intransitive, law) Of a case or a dispute, to be pending, not yet settled.^[7][14][8]
6. (intransitive, literary) To depend, with da.^[7][14][8]

Word family

• pendente
• pendenza
• pendio
• pendice
• pendaglio
• pendolo
• pendulo
• pendola
• pendolare
• pendolino

Related words

• appendere
• dipendere
• propendere
• sospendere
• pensile
• pesare
• pensare
• Latin pendeo

Usage notes

The phrase la bilancia pende dalla sua parte means that the situation is turning in someone's favour.^[4][8]

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, p. 12, 992
3. ^ a b c d e f 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 c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b c d e f Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2831
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 759
14. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse