risvegliare

Forms

risvegliare (first-person singular present risvéglio, first-person singular past historic risvegliài, past participle risvegliàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian resvegliare, Old Italian revegliare, Old Italian risvigliare and Old Italian resvegiare.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian ri- + svegliare, with the prefix of repetition.^[3][4][5][1]

The verb svegliare has a disputed route into Italian.^[3][4][1] DELI takes it from Old French esveillier, Nocentini directly from Vulgar Latin *exvigilō, and Wiktionary probably from Old Occitan esvelhar.^[3][4][1] All three go back to the Vulgar Latin verb, a variant of classical Latin ēvigilō formed on vigilō (“to keep watch”), which also gave vegliare.^[3][4][1] Wiktionary compares Old French resveiller, formed in the same way.^[1]

Meyer-Lübke noted the compound as especially Piedmontese and Neapolitan, and J. Jud studied the spread of the verb and its synonyms across the Romance languages (1926).^[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is the pronominal verb in an anonymous 13th-century text, meaning “to wake up, wake up again”.^[3] The transitive “to wake someone” follows in the mid-14th-century vernacular version of the chronicle of Isidore, where the geese of the Capitol wake the sleeping Romans.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Figurative uses appear early.^[3] In the first half of the 14th century the verb meant “to rouse someone to action”, in the vernacular Guido delle Colonne, and before 1374 Petrarch used the pronominal verb for shaking off moral inertia.^[3] Petrarch's line D'un lungo e grave sonno mi risveglio (“I wake from a long and heavy sleep”) is quoted by Tommaseo.^[7]

The sense “to stimulate” is recorded from 1546 (Luigi Alamanni) and “to revive, call back” from 1581 (Torquato Tasso).^[3] The 19th-century dictionary of Tommaseo gives risvegliare il gusto for whetting the appetite.^[7] Today the verb also says that a volcano or an activity comes back to life.^[8][9]

The noun risveglio is fairly recent: it is first recorded in Oudin's dictionary in 1640, and the purists took it up although they regarded it as a Gallicism.^[3]

Timeline

• 13th century – The pronominal verb is first recorded, in an anonymous text.^[3]
• First half of the 14th century – The figurative sense “to rouse to action” appears in the vernacular Guido delle Colonne.^[3]
• Mid-14th century – The transitive “to wake someone” appears in the vernacular chronicle of Isidore.^[3]
• Before 1374 – Petrarch uses the pronominal verb for waking from moral inertia.^[3]
• 1546 – Luigi Alamanni uses it for “to stimulate”.^[3]
• 1581 – Torquato Tasso uses it for “to revive”.^[3]
• 1640 – The noun risveglio is recorded in Oudin.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To wake again.^[5][10]
2. (transitive) To wake someone from sleep: La sirena mi ha risvegliato all'alba.^[5][11][8]
3. (transitive, figurative) To rouse someone from inertia or idleness and spur them to act.^[5][10][9]
4. (transitive, figurative) To revive a feeling, desire or memory.^[5][10][8]
5. (transitive) To stimulate or whet an instinct such as appetite or thirst.^[5][10][1]
6. (pronominal, as risvegliarsi) To wake up, or wake up again; to come round from an anaesthetic or a coma.^[8][11][10]
7. (pronominal, figurative) To shake off inertia; of a volcano or an activity, to become active again; of a feeling, to come back to life.^[8][9][11]

Word family

• risveglio
• risvegliamento
• risvegliante
• risvegliativo
• risvegliatore

Related words

• svegliare
• vegliare
• Latin vigilo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 16, 912
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
10. ^ 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
11. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse