suggellare

Forms

suggellare (first-person singular present suggèllo, first-person singular past historic suggellài, past participle suggellàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sigillō (“to seal”), from sigillum (“seal”), and is the popular counterpart of the learned sigillare.^[2][3][4][5] GRADIT, Devoto–Oli and Devoto instead see an Italian derivative: from Italian suggello, which DELI too calls a popular variant of the Latin noun.^{[6][7][8][4][1]}

The noun shows an old substitution of the diminutive suffix -ellus, and the type with ⟨sug-⟩ must be old, since it is also Old Venetian suello and Romanian sugel, the name of a whitlow.^[9] Prati set up a form Vulgar Latin *sigellum.^[10] The verb is French sceller, Occitan selar, Catalan segellar, Spanish sellar and Portuguese selar.^[3][1]

The Latin noun is a diminutive of signum (“sign, mark”), first meaning a statuette and then the figure on a signet ring and its imprint.^[11][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

GRADIT dates the verb before 1313 and DELI to Dante, who died in 1321, both with the sense “to seal”;^[6][4][5] Zingarelli gives an earlier date, before 1294.^[6][4][5] The noun suggello is older, recorded as sugiello in a Sienese letter of 1283.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Dante uses the verb for the imprint a seal leaves in wax, “as a figure is sealed in wax” (come figura in cera si suggella), and for the mark a planet sets on the world.^[12][6] In the 14th century it was the ordinary word for sealing letters: in Boccaccio's Filocolo Florio closes and seals his letter in tears, and G. Villani writes of letters sealed without the owner's knowledge.^[13] Old texts also use it for branding criminals with a hot iron.^[10]

Over time sigillare took over the literal sense, and suggellare lives on mainly in the figurative sense of confirming a pact, a friendship or an outcome, where sigillare can't replace it.^[12][10] An obsolete intransitive use meant “to fit together exactly”.^[5]

Timeline

• Before 1313 – GRADIT's first date for suggellare.^[6]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses suggellare “to seal”.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary) To seal, close with a seal: suggellare una lettera.^[6][7][2]
2. (literary) To stamp with a seal, or to mark as if with one.^[6][7][12]
3. (figurative) To confirm for good, to ratify: Hanno suggellato l'intesa con un brindisi.^[6][7][2]

Word family

• suggellamento
• suggellatore
• suggellazione
• dissuggellare
• risuggellare

Related words

• suggello
• sigillare
• sigillo
• Latin sigillum

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
3. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d e f g h De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3673
10. ^ a b c d Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 962
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET