Etymologically
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ragione

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Pronunciation

  • /raˈd͡ʒo.ne/[1]

Forms

ragione f (plural ragioni)[1] Old forms include rascione and rasgione.[1][2] Northern texts of the 13th century have rasone, raxone and raxon.[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ratiō (“reckoning, account; reason”), from its accusative.[4][5][6][1] The Latin noun is formed on ratus (“counted, fixed”), the past participle of reor (“to count, think”).[4][7][8] The same word gave French raison, Old Occitan razó, Catalan raó, Spanish razón and Portuguese razão.[5][9] razione is a learned doublet.[1][10]

The ⟨gi⟩ of the Italian word is not the Tuscan outcome of Latin ⟨ti⟩.[5][11][1] Nocentini and Sabatini–Coletti see a northern, Gallo-Romance treatment of the cluster, and Devoto a northern form later made Tuscan.[5][11][12] Wiktionary explains it in the same way: the regular Tuscan form would have been Old Italian razzone, found in some archaic Roman texts, and Tuscan writers took northern Old Italian rason for the outcome of a Latin ⟨si⟩, as in fagiolo.[1] Prati, on the other hand, held that the word is a native form, not a loan from French, like pregio and palagio.[3]

De Vaan takes the original sense of rērī to be “to count”, kept in ratus “counted, legal”, and reconstructs the root Proto-Indo-European *Hreh₁-; its further connections are uncertain.[7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form rasun in the Gallo-Italic sermons of the 12th–13th century: la bestia … non à rasun, “the beast has no reason”.[4][6] In Tuscan, ragione as the faculty of thought is in Bono Giamboni, before 1292.[4]

Semantic evolution

The Latin word first meant “account, reckoning”, as in reddere rationem “to render account”, and Italian ragione kept this sense in book-keeping, whence ragioniere and ragioneria.[4] From “account” it moved to “justification”, “cause, motive”, and to the faculty that grasps the order of things, as Latin ratio translated Greek lógos.[4]

In Old Italian ragione also meant a speech or argument (Tommaso Galliziani, about 1250: di dire mia ragione, “to tell my reason”), a cause or motive (the Novellino, rascione already in Ugurgieri Apugliese), and right, justice or jurisdiction (Giovanni Villani).[4] The sense “justice” survives in names such as the Palazzo della Ragione, the old seat of the courts.[13] The mathematical senses, proportion (1590) and the common ratio of a progression (before 1572), came later.[4]

Ragion di Stato “reason of State” echoes Cicero's ratio reipublicae and appears in Guicciardini (1521–1523); Giovanni Botero used it as a title in 1589.[4][14] Ragione sociale, a firm's name, copies French raison sociale, and a più forte ragione is also modelled on French.[4][15] German borrowed Ragione for a trading firm in 1712.[16] The verb ragionare “to reason” came to mean simply “to talk” in Italian and Ladin.[4]

Timeline

  • 12th–13th century – Rasun appears in the Gallo-Italic sermons.[4][6]
  • First half of the 13th century – Rascione, “cause”, in Ugurgieri Apugliese.[4]
  • About 1250 – Tommaso Galliziani uses ragione for an argument.[4]
  • Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses ragione for the faculty of thought.[4]
  • Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani uses it for a right or competence.[4]
  • 1521–1523 – Guicciardini speaks of the ragione of States.[4]
  • 1589 – Giovanni Botero uses ragion di Stato in the title of a work.[14]
  • 1712 – German borrows Ragione for a trading firm.[16]

Meanings

Noun

  1. reason, the human faculty of thinking logically and judging: perdere l’uso della ragione.[6][15][11]
  2. (philosophy) Reason as understood by a particular thinker (Aquinas, Kant, Hegel).[6][17]
  3. An argument put forward to convince; often plural, one's case: ascoltare le ragioni di tutti.[6][11][13]
  4. A cause, motive, ground: per ragioni di lavoro.[15][11][1]
  5. Being right: avere ragione, to be right, dare ragione a qualcuno, to agree that someone is right.[6][18][1]
  6. (dated) Right, justice; competence: a chi di ragione, to whom it may concern.[13][1]
  7. (mathematics) A ratio, proportion; the common ratio or difference of a progression: in ragione di, in proportion to.[4][6][1]
  8. ragione sociale: the registered name of a firm.[15][17]

Word family

  • ragionare
  • ragionamento
  • ragionevole
  • ragionevolezza
  • ragioniere
  • ragioneria
  • ragionato
  • sragionare

Usage notes

Ragione drops its final vowel in some fixed phrases: a ragion veduta “after careful thought”, ragion di Stato, ragion d'essere.[11][13] Di santa ragione means “soundly”, of a beating.[15][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  3. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 820
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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 d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: 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. ^ 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
  8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  10. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  11. ^ a b c d e f Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  12. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 361
  13. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  14. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3198
  15. ^ 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
  16. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
  17. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  18. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli