piantare

Forms

piantare (first-person singular present piànto, first-person singular past historic piantài, past participle piantàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Southern forms with ⟨chi-⟩ such as Old Italian chianta occur in Old Italian.^[2] In Sicily the verb is Sicilian chiantari.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin plantāre (“to plant”).^[3][4][5][1] The same word is French planter, Occitan plantar, Catalan plantar, Friulian plantâ and Old Portuguese chantar;^[4][6] Spanish plantar is a learned form.^[4][6] Latin passed it to Old High German pflanzōn, the source of German pflanzen.^[4][7]

Nocentini, Devoto–Oli and the GDLI derive the Latin verb from planta (“sole of the foot”): it first meant to press the soil down with the sole of the foot round a new shoot.^[4][8][9][7] The OLD instead derives it from a homonymous noun meaning “cutting, shoot”, and de Vaan reports the view that this noun was back-formed from the verb, so that both nouns go back to one form.^[10][11] De Vaan connects the word for the sole with plānus (“flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur of the last quarter of the 12th century.^[2] DELI and GRADIT date the word from a statute of the commune of Montagutolo of 1280, which obliges every member to plant ten cultivated trees a year (piantare ogne anno x arbori domestichi).^[3][5][9]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian already used the verb figuratively for founding something, and for fixing someone in a place or a condition.^[2] The sense “to drive deep into the ground or into any solid material” is dated from 1550, and “to leave, abandon” from Francesco Berni, before 1535.^[3][7] Prati cites Firenzuola for leaving someone suddenly.^[12]

Fixed phrases followed from these senses: piantare in asso “to leave in the lurch”, piantare le tende “to settle somewhere”, and the familiar piantarla “to stop it”.^[5][13] Piantare chiodi “to run up debts” and andare a piantare cavoli “to retire to private life” are colloquial.^[8][13]

Timeline

• 1175–1200 – The Venetian Proverbia que dicuntur use the verb.^[2]
• 1280 – The statute of Montagutolo uses piantare for planting trees.^[3]
• Before 1535 – Francesco Berni uses it for leaving someone.^[3]
• 1550 – Cosimo Bartoli uses it for driving something into the ground.^[3]
• 1941 – Piantagrane “troublemaker” is recorded.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To plant: to put seeds, cuttings or young plants into the ground to grow: Ho piantato due limoni nel giardino.^[5][8][14]
2. To plant a piece of land with a crop: piantare un campo a ulivi.^[5][14]
3. To drive or stick something into a surface: piantare un paletto nella sabbia.^[5][13]
4. To thrust a weapon into someone's body.^[5][8]
5. To set up firmly in a place: piantare le tende.^[5][13]
6. (figurative) To found, establish.^[5][13]
7. (figurative, colloquial) To abandon, leave suddenly; to jilt.^[5][15][1]
8. (familiar) In piantarla, to stop doing or saying something: Piantala!^[15][13]
9. (reflexive) To plant oneself, settle in a place; of a couple, to split up.^[15]

Word family

• piantagione
• piantata
• piantato
• piantatore
• piantatura
• piantagrane
• piantone
• piantonare
• trapiantare
• trapianto
• impiantare

Related words

• pianta
• impianto
• Latin planta
• French planter

Usage notes

Piantare in asso means to leave someone in the lurch, and piantare baracca e burattini to drop everything.^[5][13][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f 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 e f 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 k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2895
8. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 294
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 770
13. ^ a b c d e f g Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
15. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse