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porto

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GRADIT has separate entries for porto “harbour”, from Latin, porto “carriage”, formed from the verb portare, and porto “port wine”, from the name of the Portuguese city;[1][2][3] DELI and DEI also separate them.[1][2][3]

porto1 harbour

Pronunciation

Forms

porto m (plural porti)[4] An old plural is pòrtora.[3]

Etymology

The harbour is inherited from Latin portus (“passage, entrance; harbour”), a word of Indo-European origin related to Latin porta (“gate”).[2][5][1][6] The sense “passage” survives in Spanish puerto and Portuguese porto “mountain pass”.[3][7] The word is found in all of Romance except Romanian: French port, Occitan port, Catalan port, Sardinian portu and Friulian puart.[5][7][3] It was borrowed into Welsh porth and Old English port.[7][3]

Latin portus comes from Proto-Italic *portus, from Proto-Indo-European *pértus (“crossing”), from the root *per- (“to cross”).[4] Nocentini lists its exact cognates: Avestan pərətu- (“passage, ford”), Old High German furt (“ford”) (German Furt, English ford), Old Norse fjǫrðr “fjord” and Welsh rhyd (“ford”).[5][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT dates the word before 1250, and Nocentini to the first half of the 13th century.[1][5] DELI's first record is Rinaldo d'Aquino, in the sense “sheltered water where ships can lie safely and load and unload”; in his lament the ships “son giute a porto / e or vogliono collare” (have come into port and now want to hoist sail).[2][8]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense “final goal, longed-for end” is recorded in Rustico di Filippo, before 1300.[2] Petrarch called his little room “un porto / a le gravi tempeste mie diurne” (a harbour for the heavy storms of my days), and the Church used the word for God, the Virgin and the saints as a refuge.[1][6] Giovanni Villani used it for a trading post.[3] In the Venetian lagoon each of the three openings in the coastal strip is a porto.[1][9]

The phrase porto di mare “place where people come and go all the time” is probably a calque on Milanese port de mar, which Cherubini recorded in this sense in 1841.[2] The adjective portuoso came from Latin in the 14th century, and portuale is recorded in 1871.[2][5] Medieval Latin portulanus (1285) gave portolano, the pilots' book of harbours.[10] German used Porto as a sailors' word from 1479.[11]

Timeline

  • Before 1250 – GRADIT's date for the first record.[1]
  • 13th century – Rinaldo d'Aquino uses porto “harbour”.[2]
  • Before 1300 – Rustico di Filippo uses it for a final goal.[2]
  • 1285 – Medieval Latin portulanus is recorded.[10]
  • 1323 – Portuoso “having many harbours”.[5]
  • 1479 – German Porto “harbour” is recorded.[11]
  • 1841 – Cherubini records Milanese port de mar in the sense later taken by porto di mare.[2]
  • 1871 – Portuale is recorded.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A harbour or port, on a sea, lake or river, where ships can shelter and load and unload: La nave è entrata in porto all'alba.[1][9][6][4]
  2. A port city; the harbour district of a town: Abitano vicino al porto.[1][6]
  3. In the Venetian lagoon, each of the openings through which the sea flows in and out.[1][9]
  4. (figurative) A haven, a place or person that offers peace and safety.[1][6]
  5. andare in porto, condurre in porto: to succeed, to bring to a successful end: L'accordo è andato in porto.[1][9]
  6. porto franco: a free port, porto di mare (figurative), a place where people constantly come and go.[9][12]

Word family

  • portuale
  • portuoso
  • porticciolo
  • avamporto
  • interporto
  • retroporto

porto2 carriage, transport

Pronunciation

Forms

porto m (plural porti)[1][9]

Etymology

This noun is formed from the verb portare (“to carry”), as a noun without a suffix; French port has the same formation from 1265.[1][9][5][6][13] The verb is inherited from Latin portō (“to carry”).[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nocentini dates the word to 1255–1290 in the phrase porto d'armi, and GRADIT to the first half of the 14th century.[5][1] In the Leggenda di Lazzaro, Marta e Maddalena the apostles are carried in a single porto to the Virgin's house before her death.[8]

Semantic evolution

DEI finds the sense “carrying, transport” in Giovanni Maria Cecchi and Filippo Sassetti, and “cost of carriage” in Annibal Caro and Tasso, all in the 16th century;[13][12] Zingarelli dates the word before 1566.[13][12] In Cecchi's L'assiuolo a letter from Calicut or Peru would not cost so much postage.[15] DEI also records the military sense “way of carrying arms” and, in 1871, the bearers of the litter in the Compagnia della Misericordia.[13] German took the word as a postal term, Porto “postage”, from 1630.[11][13]

Timeline

  • 1255–1290 – Porto d'armi.[5]
  • 16th century – Cecchi and Sassetti use porto “transport”, and Caro and Tasso “cost of carriage”.[13]
  • 1630 – German Porto “postage” is recorded.[11]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (commerce) Carriage, transport of goods, letters or luggage.[1][9][16]
  2. The cost of carriage; postage: franco di porto, carriage paid, porto assegnato, carriage forward.[1][9][12]
  3. porto d'armi: the carrying of a weapon, and the licence for it: Ha chiesto il porto d'armi per la caccia.[9][12][16]

porto3 port wine

Pronunciation

Forms

porto m (invariable)[9]

Etymology

The wine is named after the Portuguese city it was shipped from, borrowed from Portuguese Porto, also called ⟨Oporto⟩, from ⟨o porto⟩ “the harbour”.[2][5][4][13] French and English also call it ⟨porto⟩, and it is German Portwein.[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nocentini dates the word to 1874 and DELI's first record is Cusmano in 1889, for the bright, delicately scented fortified wine of Portugal.[5][2]

Timeline

  • 1874 – Nocentini's date for porto “port wine”.[5]
  • 1889 – Cusmano uses the word.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. port, the sweet fortified red or white wine of Portugal.[1][4]

Usage notes

Porto is also the past participle of porgere (“to hand, offer”), recorded in the 13th century in Chiaro Davanzati.[2] GRADIT records a fourth, obsolete porto, a barge once used to ferry people and goods across rivers.[1][4] The Pyrenean porto “mountain pass” of Old Italian epic came from Spanish through Old French.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3030
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  6. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  8. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 13
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  10. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 799
  11. ^ a b c d Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  12. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3031
  14. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  15. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  16. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana