Etymologically
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stesso

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈstes.so/[1]
  • Milan: /ˈstɛs.so/[1]

Forms

stesso (feminine stessa, masculine plural stessi, feminine plural stesse)[1] The older and literary form is istesso.[2][3][4] Old and dialect forms include stéssi, stisso and stissu.[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Italian istesso, with the loss of the first vowel, inherited from Vulgar Latin *istum ipsum (“this very one”).[6][7][8][9][1] The Latin phrase is the accusative of iste (“that (near you)”) and ipse (“himself, itself”), literally “this same”.[6][2][3] Devoto starts from the nominative ⟨iste ipse⟩ crossed with the accusative,[10] and Battaglia notes that the singular ⟨stessi⟩ was remade on the ending of the third-person pronoun.[5]

The Latin pronouns survive separately too: ipse gave esso, Sardinian issu, Occitan eis, Spanish ese and Portuguese esse, and iste gave Old Italian esto, Romanian ist and este.[11][12] In Romanian, Italian, Occitan and Spanish the old use of ⟨ipse⟩ as a pronoun of identity was kept.[11]

Latin ⟨iste⟩ goes back to Proto-Italic *es-to-, with the pronoun Proto-Indo-European *só as its second part.[13][1] Latin ⟨ipse⟩ was at first a compound of the pronoun is (“he”) with a particle ⟨-pse⟩, still inflected inside the word in early forms such as ⟨eapse⟩ and ⟨eumpse⟩; later only the ending changed.[13][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in the Novellino, at the end of the 13th century, in the emphatic sense “himself, in person”.[6][7] Brunetto Latini's Rettorica has la ragione stessa “reason itself”, and Dante's Inferno Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia (“weeping itself does not let them weep there”).[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word mostly reinforced a noun or pronoun, as in Dante's me stesso and Boccaccio's quel dì stesso “that very day”.[14] DELI dates the sense of identity, “the same”, to Annibal Caro (before 1566), and it is now the main sense.[6][8]

The form without ⟨i-⟩ won out in the written language;[2][3][9] istesso remains old, literary or Tuscan.[2][3][9] With the personal pronouns it forms the reflexive and emphatic series me stesso, te stesso, sé stesso, noi stessi.[1][8] Used as a pronoun, lo stesso means “the same thing”, and many set phrases are built on it, such as al tempo stesso “at the same time”, sulla stessa barca “in the same boat” and fine a sé stesso “an end in itself”.[8][2]

Timeline

  • Late 13th century – The Novellino uses stesso for “himself, in person”.[6]
  • 1300–1313 – Dante writes lo pianto stesso.[5]
  • Before 1566 – Annibal Caro uses it in the sense “the same”.[6]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. same, identical, the one and not another: abitiamo nello stesso quartiere da vent'anni.[8][2][9]
  2. Equal, alike in amount or kind: i due fratelli portano la stessa taglia.[8][2][9]
  3. After a personal pronoun, -self, as a reinforcement: l'ha fatto lui stesso.[8][9][3]
  4. very, in person: è venuto il sindaco stesso.[8][15]
  5. even: i suoi stessi rivali lo stimano.[8][3]
  6. After an adverb of time, this very: partirò oggi stesso.[8][15]
  7. Referring back to something just named, the said: si apre la scatola e si toglie il coperchio della scatola stessa.[8][3]

Pronoun

  1. The same person or thing: ha ordinato lo stesso.[1][8]

Word family

  • istesso

Usage notes

Sé stesso is also written se stesso, without the accent.[1][9] With medesimo it can form the emphatic gli stessi medesimi errori, and colloquial Italian has the superlative stessissimo.[2][9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  4. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
  5. ^ 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, p. 20, 165
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 426
  11. ^ a b 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 de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  14. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
  15. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli