sudare

Forms

sudare (first-person singular present sùdo, first-person singular past historic sudài, past participle sudàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] An old dialect form is Old Italian suare.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sūdō (“to sweat; to toil”).^[3][4][5][1] The verb lives on in most of Romance, but not in Romanian:^[6] French suer, Occitan suzar, Spanish sudar and Portuguese suar.^[4][7]

De Vaan takes sūdō as probably formed from a noun Proto-Indo-European *swoyd-o- (“sweat”), found in Indo-Iranian and Germanic, from the root Proto-Indo-European *sweyd- (“to sweat”); the Latin noun sūdor, the source of sudore, belongs to the same root.^[8][1][4][9] Related words for sweat are Ancient Greek ἱδρώς (hidrṓs), Latvian sviedri, Welsh chwys, Old High German sweiz and Old English swāt, the ancestor of English sweat.^[8][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is Bono Giamboni, before 1292, in the sense “to give off sweat”.^[3] Zingarelli dates the word to 1268, and GRADIT to the second half of the 13th century.^[10][5]

Semantic evolution

Petrarch has Vulcan at his forge, Sospira e suda a l'opera Vulcano (“Vulcan sighs and sweats at his work”).^[2][11] The figurative sense “to toil, to work hard” is recorded in Sant'Antonino (before 1459), and Tuscan proverbs such as chi non suda, non ha roba (“who does not sweat has nothing”) rest on it.^[3][11] The transitive senses followed: “to exude” in 1550 and “to earn by hard work” in Lorenzo Magalotti (1693).^[3]

The participle sudato meant “drenched in sweat” by about 1350 and “achieved with great effort” in Poliziano's Stanze (1475–1478).^[3] Claudio Achillini's baroque line Sudate, o fochi, a preparar metalli, quoted by Manzoni in I promessi sposi, became a byword for bombast.^[12] The learned sudario, the cloth for wiping sweat, also names the veil of Veronica from Giovanni Villani on.^[3]

Hyperbolic phrases describe great toil: sudare sangue and sudare sette camicie.^[5][10]

Timeline

• Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses sudare.^[3]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani uses sudario for the veil of Veronica.^[3]
• About 1350 – sudato “sweaty” in the Italian Crescenzi.^[3]
• Before 1459 – Sant'Antonino uses sudare for “to toil”.^[3]
• 1475–1478 – Poliziano's Stanze has sudato “hard-won”.^[3]
• 1550 – the transitive sense “to exude” is recorded.^[3]
• 1693 – Magalotti uses it for “to earn by hard work”.^[3]
• 1865 – the noun sudata is recorded.^[3][4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To sweat, perspire; also of parts of the body: Dopo la salita sudavo da capo a piedi.^[5][13][14]
2. (intransitive, figurative) To toil, to work hard and with great effort: Ha sudato per anni in fabbrica.^[5][13]
3. (transitive) To exude a liquid: Il tronco sudava resina.^[5][13][10]
4. (transitive) To earn or obtain something by hard work; also pronominal, sudarsi: sudarsi la pensione.^[5][13][10]
5. (intransitive, cooking) Of ingredients being cooked, to give off their juices slightly.^[15]

Word family

• sudata
• sudato
• sudaticcio
• sudario
• sudamina
• trasudare
• essudare
• sudacchiare

Related words

• sudore
• Latin sūdō

Usage notes

Sudare freddo is to break out in a cold sweat, from illness or fear;^[5][13][10] sudare sette camicie and sudare sangue mean to work extremely hard for something.^[5][13][10]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. 20, 492
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ 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
6. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3671
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 431
10. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
14. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana