pigliare

Forms

pigliare (first-person singular present pìglio, first-person singular past historic pigliài, past participle pigliàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian piliare, Old Italian pilare, Old Italian pillare and Old Italian pilliare.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pīliāre, an extended form of Late Latin pīlāre (“to rob, plunder”).^[4][2][5][6] The Late Latin verb is found in Ammianus Marcellinus.^[4][2] Nocentini, DEI and Devoto take its sense of plundering as a slang development of the older pīlāre “to heap up; to set up a pillar”, a verb formed from Latin pīla (“pillar, column of stacked blocks”).^[4][2][7][8] Nocentini compares compīlāre, which went the same way from heaping up to plundering.^[4]

The extended form with ⟨i⟩ is centred in Italo-Romance.^[4] An old proposal, revived by G. Serra and reported by DELI, derives it from pīleus (“felt cap”), the cap of freedom held in the hands in medieval transfers of land, so that the verb would first have meant taking possession through that symbol.^[9][4] Nocentini finds neither the vowel sequence nor the special senses a reason to give up the usual etymology.^[4] Wiktionary instead derives the Late Latin verb from pilus (“hair”) and treats *pīliāre as a blend of pīlāre with spoliō (“to strip, rob”).^[1]

The same verb is Old Occitan pilhar (“to take”), Catalan pillar, Spanish pillar and Portuguese pilhar.^[4][10] DEI and REW hold that Spanish and Portuguese took the word from Catalan, and that French piller (“to plunder”) is borrowed from Italian.^[2][10][1] The form Emilian piar means “to light” in the dialects of Parma, Reggio and Bologna.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the poems of Mazzeo di Ricco, from the first half of the 13th century, where the speaker calls it childish folly to think one can “take the sun shining in the water” (pigliar lo sole ne l’agua splendienti).^[9][3] The sense was “to take, seize”, often by force and also figuratively.^[9][11]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the verb for every kind of taking: catching, capturing a city, seizing a person.^[3][12] In Boccaccio it already had set phrases such as pigliar moglie “to take a wife”.^[2][13] The intransitive sense of a plant that takes root appears first as a reflexive in the vernacular Crescenzi, about 1350, and without the pronoun in Citolini in 1561.^[9] Its deverbal piglio meant the act of taking (before 1294, Brunetto Latini) and soon also a look or expression (before 1300, Rustico di Filippo).^[9]

In modern Italian pigliare is a more familiar and often more emphatic synonym of prendere, stressing the quick act of grabbing rather than holding.^[14][15] For that reason its past participle and compound tenses are less used.^[14] Many phrases keep it: non sapere che pesci pigliare “not to know what to do”, the proverb chi dorme non piglia pesci, che ti piglia? “what has got into you?”, and the Tuscan pigliare le gambe “to set off”.^{[6][16][15][14][13]} Piglia piglia, used as a noun, is a scramble to grab things.^[6][14] In Emilian and southern dialects the verb also means “to catch fire”.^[2]

Timeline

• 1200–1250 – Mazzeo di Ricco uses pigliare “to take”.^[9][3]
• Before 1294 – The deverbal piglio appears in Brunetto Latini.^[9]
• c. 1350 – The vernacular Crescenzi uses the verb, as a reflexive, of plants that take root.^[9]
• 15th century – Bernardo Bellincioni has pigliar la lepre col carro, “to catch the hare with a cart”, to act with patience.^[2]
• 1561 – Citolini uses the intransitive verb of a plant taking root.^[9]
• 1804 – Pigliamosche, a small insect-eating bird, is recorded in D'Alberti's dictionary.^[9]
• 1937 – Bontempelli uses pigliatutto for the ace that takes all cards in a variant of scopa.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. (colloquial) To take: Piglia il cappotto, che fa freddo.^[6][5][15]
2. To grab, seize someone or something, often quickly or with force: l’ha pigliato per il braccio.^[6][8][13]
3. To take a road or direction.^[6]
4. To take someone along, into one's group.^[6]
5. (intransitive, of a plant) To take root.^[6][5][16]
6. (intransitive, of glue, varnish, plaster) To set, take hold: questa vernice non piglia.^[6][5][1]
7. (pronominal, pigliarsi) To get, catch, take for oneself: pigliarsi un’influenza.^[5][16][8]
8. (pigliarsela) To take offence, get angry: pigliarsela con qualcuno.^[5][16][15]

Word family

• piglio
• pigliamosche
• pigliatutto
• appigliarsi
• appiglio
• impigliare
• spigliare
• spigliato
• spigliatezza
• rappigliare
• ripigliare
• scompigliare
• scompiglio

Related words

• pila
• compilare
• French piller

Usage notes

Pigliare and prendere are interchangeable in most uses, pigliare being the more familiar.^[15][14] DELI treats piglio “expression, look” as a deverbal of pigliare too, rather than a back-formation from cipiglio as other dictionaries hold, since piglio in this sense is recorded about three centuries before cipiglio.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2916
3. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13, 446
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
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. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
14. ^ 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)
15. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
16. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli