sceverare

Forms

sceverare (first-person singular present scévero or scèvero, first-person singular past historic sceverài, past participle sceveràto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Older and poetic forms are scevrare and the obsolete severare and sevrare.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *exsēperāre, formed with ex- on *sēperāre, a variant of Latin sēparō (“to divide, separate”).^[5][6][7][1] Prati and Wikizionario also allow a form *exsēparāre.^[8][9] The Latin verb is formed from sē- (“apart”) and parō (“to arrange, prepare”).^[1]

Devoto explains the ⟨e⟩ of the second syllable as the regular change of Latin /a/ to /e/ in an open inner syllable before /r/, and the ⟨v⟩ as the northern voicing of /p/ between vowels.^[10] The same Latin verb, without the prefix, gave French sevrer (“to wean”), Old Occitan sebrar and savrer (“to wean”) in Engadine, while the compound *disseperāre gave Old French dessevrer.^[11] Körting lists French séparer as the learned form.^[12]

Scevro “free of, devoid of” is a shortened past participle of the verb.^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI dates the verb, in the sense “to separate, to distinguish”, to Bono Giamboni, before 1292,^[5] and Zingarelli gives 1268.^[3] In Giamboni's Vizi e virtù death is what “separates” a man from his wife, family and friends.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb meant above all to part one person or thing from another: a translation of the Gospel saying runs Cui Dio congiunse, l'uomo non gli sceveri, “whom God has joined, let no man put asunder”.^[13][2] Petrarch has the shorter form scevri.^[2][8] Bernardo Davanzati, translating Tacitus, writes of the mutineers who sceverano i vecchi da' novelli, “separate the veterans from the recruits”.^[13][2]

In the 16th century Pietro Bembo already noted severare as a form used instead of separare.^[13] By the 19th century Tommaseo found separare the common word and sceverare rare, though less so than scevrare; of the participles, scevro lived on in educated speech while scevero did not.^[2] Today the verb is literary, mostly in the figurative sense of telling one thing from another after weighing them.^[7][14][15]

Timeline

• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses sceverare “to separate”.^[5][7]
• 1305–1306 – Giordano da Pisa uses the short participle scevero.^[5]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses scevro.^[5]
• 1861–1879 – Tommaseo calls the verb uncommon beside separare.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary) To separate a person or thing from a group or category; to set apart: sceverare i buoni dai cattivi.^[7][3][15]
2. (literary) To distinguish one thing from another by examining them; to sift, tell apart: sceverare il vero dal falso.^[7][14][16]

Word family

• scevro
• sceveramento
• disceverare
• sceverazione

Related words

• separare
• Latin sēparō
• French sevrer

Usage notes

The present is stressed on the root, io scévero (also scèvero).^[3][1] The verb takes da before the thing set apart.^[16][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
3. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
4. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
5. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
9. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
13. ^ a b c d Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
14. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
16. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana