porre

Forms

porre (first-person singular present póngo, first-person singular past historic pósi, past participle pósto or pòsto, first-person singular imperfect ponévo, auxiliary avére)^[1] The older infinitive is ponere; old and literary variants include pognere, ponare, ponnere, pore and punere.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pōnō (“to put down, place”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin infinitive lost its unstressed vowel after the stress, and the consonants that met were assimilated; the older infinitive, Old Italian ponere, survived in the early language.^[7][2] The present tense took its ⟨g⟩ from the pattern of vengo (as in Old Italian vegno), a much-debated change.^[1]

The word is panromance: French pondre, Occitan ponre and Catalan pondre (“to lay eggs”), Spanish poner, Portuguese pôr, Sardinian pònnere and Romanian pune.^[5][8] The sense “to lay eggs” is also found in northern Italian dialects such as Emilian and Friulian, while in French the sense “to put” passed to the verb from pausō.^[9][8]

The Latin verb is a compound of sinō (“to leave, let”) with the prefix po-, which marked movement away or downwards and has parallels in Lithuanian and Old Church Slavonic.^[4][5][7] De Vaan traces it through the loss of the vowel of the simple verb; its old perfect was the regular perfect of the simple verb, and the later perfect was formed on the participle.^[10][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is a document of the late 12th century recording an exchange of land, with the sense “to put”.^[4] Guidotto da Bologna, in the first half of the 13th century, used it for “to suppose, put forward as a hypothesis”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The translation of Crescenzi's treatise on agriculture, about 1350, has porre for “to plant”.^[4][9] In Old Italian it could also mean “to brood (eggs)”.^[11] The sense “to dedicate”, used in inscriptions on tombs and monuments (i figli posero), is recorded from 1822.^[4]

Many fixed phrases use the verb: porre fine “to end”, porre mano “to begin”, porre mente “to pay attention”, porre in essere “to carry out”.^[6] Its participle gave posto and posta, and its present participle ponente “west”.^[11][8]

Timeline

• Late 12th century – A land-exchange document has porre “to put”.^[4]
• First half of the 13th century – Guidotto da Bologna uses it for “to suppose”.^[4]
• About 1350 – The Crescenzi translation uses it for “to plant”.^[4]
• 1822 – The sense “to dedicate” in inscriptions is recorded at Milan.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To put, place: porre i libri sullo scaffale.^[6][2][1]
2. To lay, rest gently: le pose una mano sulla spalla.^[6][2]
3. (figurative) To suppose, assume: poniamo che arrivi domani.^[6][4]
4. (logic, mathematics) To posit as a premise; to give a value to a variable.^[6]
5. To pose, put forward: porre una condizione.^[6][1]
6. In inscriptions, to set up or dedicate a monument.^[6][4]
7. To plant: porre un campo a ulivi.^[6][2][4]
8. To attribute: porre qualcosa a merito di qualcuno.^[6]

Word family

• porsi
• apporre
• comporre
• deporre
• disporre
• esporre
• imporre
• opporre
• proporre
• supporre
• anteporre
• contrapporre
• frapporre
• sottoporre
• sovrapporre
• posto
• posta

Related words

• ponente
• ponimento
• Latin pōnō

Usage notes

Porre is irregular: pongo, poni, pone, poniamo; past historic posi; participle posto; future porrò.^[2][7] Its compounds (comporre, supporre) are conjugated the same way.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3025
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 Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 798