suggere

Forms

suggere (first-person singular present sùggo, first-person singular past historic sùssi, no past participle, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and literary forms include Old Italian sugere, Old Italian suggiare and Old Italian sugiare.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sūgere (“to suck”).^{[4][5][6][1][7]} Zingarelli calls it a learned word.^[8] Devoto explains the double /dd͡ʒ/ as the normal doubling of the consonant after the stress in a word stressed on the third syllable from the end.^[9]

The Latin verb lives on in Romanian suge, Sardinian sùere and Portuguese sugir.^[5][7][10]

Latin sūgō continues a Proto-Italic *souge/o-, from Proto-Indo-European *seug- (“to suck”).^[11] Nocentini compares Old High German sūgan (modern German saugen), Old English sūcan (modern English suck), Latvian sukt and Old Irish súgim, and sets them on an elementary root *sū- (“to suck, to suckle”).^[5] The same root is seen in sūcus (“juice”), the source of succo.^[5][4][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is a Sienese translation of Egidio Romano of 1288, and its first sense is to draw a liquid in by mouth, particularly to suckle at the breast.^[2] DELI dates the word from Petrarch, before 1374.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb was used of infants at the breast, figuratively, and of drawing anything to oneself.^[2] Boccaccio writes of offering crusts of bread to the mouths of those who still suck milk, and the Laude of Cortona has Christ say to his mother's grief, “ché 'l mio lacte sugesti” (for you sucked my milk).^[3]

Petrarch's line “le vene e 'l cor m'asciuga e sugge” (it dries and sucks my veins and heart) set the literary figurative use.^[6][12] Ariosto, Firenzuola and Segneri still used it of sucking milk and tears.^[13] Today it is a rare, high-register synonym of succhiare, used in very few forms and mostly figuratively.^[12][1]

Timeline

• 1288 – First record, in a Sienese translation of Egidio Romano.^[2]
• Before 1374 – Petrarch uses sugge of love draining his veins and heart.^[4][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (literary) To suck, to draw in a liquid with the lips; also figurative: Le farfalle suggono il nettare dai fiori del giardino.^[6][14][15]

Word family

• risuggere

Related words

• succhiare
• succo
• sugo

Usage notes

The verb is defective: it has no past participle and so no compound tenses.^[16][14][8] Its past historic is suggei or suggetti, while Wiktionary gives sussi.^[14][8][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it, p. 24, 203
3. ^ 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, 508
4. ^ a b c d 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3674
8. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 432
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b 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, p. 4, 1302
14. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
16. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier