prospero

Forms

prospero (feminine prospera, masculine plural prosperi, feminine plural prospere)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin prosperus (“favourable, fortunate”), a learned word, also written prosper, borrowed with its derivatives prosperāre and prosperitās.^[2][3][4][5] The same Latin word gave French prospère, in Old French from the 12th century, and Spanish próspero.^[3][6]

The Romans explained the adjective by a phrase meaning “according to hope”, but the length of the vowel is against it and it is taken as a folk etymology.^[3][7][8] De Vaan analyses the word as prō and Proto-Indo-European *sph₁rós (“thriving”), or as a derivative of a compound verb meaning “to thrive”, from the root Proto-Indo-European *speh₁- that also gave Latin spēs (“hope”).^[9][1] He compares Hittite, Sanskrit and Old Church Slavonic words for being full, getting fat or succeeding.^[9][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in the 13th-century Storia de Troia e de Roma, which says that everything “would have gone favourably for Jugurtha” (onne cosa fora stata prospera a Iugurta) but for the hunger his army had suffered.^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word mostly meant “favourable”: Boccaccio's travellers “having a favourable wind” (avendo prospero vento) soon reached Sicily, and prospero was paired with avverso for good and bad fortune.^[10][4][8] Old forms include pròspo and pròspro.^[8]

The sense “thriving, flourishing”, of trade, a business or a country, grew out of this and is now the main one.^[4][5][11] DELI records prospero for “buxom, healthy-looking” before 1530, a sense now usually given by prosperoso.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 13th century – The Storia de Troia e de Roma has the first record.^[2]
• 1268 – Zingarelli's date for the first record.^[12]
• Before 1306 – Iacopone uses prosperitate.^[2]
• About 1336 – Boccaccio uses prosperare.^[2]
• Before 1530 – Prospero is used for “buxom, healthy”.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. thriving, flourishing; going very well and bringing wealth: una prospera azienda agricola.^{[4][5][12][1]}
2. Enjoying wealth and well-being, prosperous: una regione prospera.^[4][5][13]
3. Favourable, propitious, lucky; of wind, fair.^[4][5][12]
4. (literary) Healthy and well-fed, prosperoso.^[4][12][11]

Word family

• prosperamente
• prosperevole

Related words

• prosperare
• prosperità
• prosperoso
• Latin prosperus
• Latin spes

Usage notes

Prospero is also a man's name.^[1] In Rome and the south prospero is a separate, regional noun for a match (fiammifero): a spoken *pospŏrum from fosforo, reshaped after the name Prospero, recorded in Migliorini's Lingua e cultura in 1948 and used by Gadda.^{[3][4][8][14]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
6. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3112
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
11. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
12. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
14. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Marcato, Carla (1998), I dialetti italiani: dizionario etimologico, Torino: UTET