sorte

Forms

sorte f (plural sorti)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sors (“lot; fate”), from the accusative sortem.^[2][3][4][1] The same word is French sort, Occitan sort, Catalan sort, Spanish suerte, Portuguese sorte, Sardinian sorte and Romanian soarte.^[3][5] Latin also passed it to Irish.^[6]

In Latin the word was first a wooden tablet used to answer questions put to an oracle and to draw lots for magistrates; the tablets were first laid out in a row, and the word is a derivative of Latin serō (“to line up, arrange”).^[3][2][7] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *sorti- (“joining, joint”) and Proto-Indo-European *sr-ti-, and Wiktionary names the root Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to line up”).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI dates the sense “condition that fate gives a person” to an anonymous text of the late 12th or early 13th century, and the sense of a mysterious force ruling human events to Dante, before 1321.^[2] GRADIT dates the word to the first half of the 13th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used sorte widely: for luck and chance, for a person's state, for sorcery in the 14th century, for the outcome of something, for a tribute or due, and in Jacopone for a lineage; in the 16th century it also meant “quality, kind”.^[6] In the medieval communes of northern Italy sortes were the common lands shared out among neighbours, and the place name Sorti comes from them.^[6]

Latin sortior gave sortire “to allot; to obtain by lot”, recorded in Dante, and sorteggiare is also Dante's.^[2] In 17th-century poetry, Fato, Sorte and Destino were words authors excused in their prefaces as poetic usage, not as pagan belief.^[2] Modern Italian keeps the old sense of the lots themselves, the objects cast to read omens, mostly in the plural.^[4][9]

Timeline

• Late 12th or early 13th century – An anonymous text uses sorte for one's condition.^[2]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses sorte for the force ruling events, and the verb sorteggiare.^[2]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses sortire “to allot”.^[2]
• 1625 – Marino's Lira excuses Fato, Sorte and Destino as poetic words.^[2]
• 1873 – Sorteggio is recorded in the Tommaseo–Bellini dictionary.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. fate, destiny: the mysterious force thought to rule events and human lives unpredictably: Non resta che affidarsi alla sorte.^{[4][10][9][1]}
2. One's lot or condition, brought about by events outside one's control: Non si è mai lamentato della sua sorte.^[4][10][9]
3. The outcome of an undertaking; also, in the plural, the future of a person or a country: le sorti della guerra.^[4][10][11]
4. A chance event, a piece of luck: Ebbi la sorte di trovarlo in casa.^[4][10][9]
5. (history, mostly plural) The lots: stones, sticks, dice and other marked objects cast to read omens.^[4][9][12]

Word family

• sorteggiare
• sorteggio
• sortire

Related words

• sorta
• consorte
• serie
• Latin sors

Usage notes

Common phrases are tirare a sorte and estrarre a sorte “to draw lots”, per sorte “by chance”, in sorte “as one's lot”, ironia della sorte and fare buon viso a cattiva sorte “to make the best of a bad job”.^[4][13] GRADIT has a separate literary sorte that is a variant of sorta “kind”, a word that came from French sorte;^[4][11][5] Ariosto writes di che sorte, and the trade phrase in sorte “of various kinds” keeps it.^[4][11][5] Sorte is also the feminine plural of sorto, the past participle of sorgere.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3560
7. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ a b c d 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 Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
12. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
13. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org