suonare

Forms

suonare (first-person singular present suòno, first-person singular past historic suonài, past participle suonàto, auxiliary avére or èssere)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sonō (“to sound, resound; to cry, sing”), a verb formed from sonus (“sound”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The diphthong ⟨uo⟩ of the stressed forms (“suòno” “I play”) has spread to the unstressed ones, so that “suonavo” and “suonerò” are now commoner than “sonavo” and “sonerò”, and “sonare” is old or regional.^[4][6][7][8]

The Latin verb lives on throughout Romance: French sonner, Occitan sonar, Catalan sonar, Spanish sonar, Portuguese soar, Sardinian sonare, Romanian suna and Vegliote sonuar.^[2][9] Some dialects shifted the meaning: Old Milanese “sonar” meant “to seem”, Logudorese “to resemble”, and in Valais and Vaud the verb came to mean “to smell”.^[9]

Sonō goes back to Proto-Italic *swonaō, an iterative of Proto-Indo-European *swenh₂- (“to sound, resound”);^[1] Latin also had an archaic sonere of the third conjugation, in Ennius and Accius.^[1] The same root is in Sanskrit स्वनति (svanati, “to sound”) and Old Church Slavonic звьнѣти (zvĭněti, “to resound”).^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nocentini and GRADIT date the verb to 1219;^[2][3] DIFIT puts its musical sense, making an instrument produce sounds, in the first half of the 13th century, after DELI.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the verb is used of horns, bells and instruments, as in Dante's “Io senti' sonare un alto corno” (I heard a high horn sound) and Boccaccio's campanello.^[11] Bells gave many fixed phrases: suonare a morto (to toll for the dead), a martello or a stormo (to ring the alarm), a distesa (in full peal).^[7][3] Dante also used it for what words mean, ben puoi sapere omai che 'l suo dir suona (you may well know now what his words mean), a sense now literary.^[3][5]

The modern dictionaries add familiar senses: “to beat up” (suonarle a qualcuno, to give someone a thrashing) and “to swindle”.^[3][6] The family includes sonata, from the 15th century, which became the name of a musical form.^[2] French recorded Italian suonare as a musical term in 1703 and German in 1901.^[10]

Timeline

• 1219 – First record.^[2][3]
• First half of the 13th century – Musical sense, playing an instrument.^[10]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses sonare of a horn, and in the sense “to mean”.^[11][3]
• 14th century – Suonatore, a player.^[2]
• 15th century – Sonata.^[2]
• 1703 – French records the Italian term.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To play a musical instrument, (absolute) to play music, as a performer: Mia sorella suona il violoncello in un'orchestra.^[3][4][5][1]
2. (transitive) To perform a piece or the music of a composer: Stasera il quartetto suona Haydn.^[3][4][5]
3. (transitive) To ring or sound a device: the doorbell, the horn, the bells, (absolute) to honk: Non suonare, ci sono i bambini che dormono.^[3][6][1]
4. (transitive) To announce or signal by a sound; of a clock, to strike the hour: Il campanile ha suonato le sette.^[3][5][6]
5. (intransitive) Of an instrument, a bell, an alarm or a telephone, to ring, give out a sound: Il telefono suonava da cinque minuti.^[3][7][1]
6. (intransitive, copulative) To sound, seem: La sua scusa suona falsa.^[5][1]
7. (colloquial) To beat someone up; to swindle: suonarle a qualcuno, to give someone a beating.^[3][6][12]
8. (literary) To mean, signify.^[3][5]

Word family

• suonata
• sonata
• suonatore
• suoneria
• suonabile
• risuonare

Related words

• suono
• Latin sonō

Usage notes

The auxiliary is avere when the subject plays or rings something, and avere or essere when a bell, clock or signal sounds by itself (sono suonate le otto).^[7][1] Suonato, the past participle, is also a colloquial adjective for someone “punch-drunk, a bit crazy”.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d e f g Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
8. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
11. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 19, 399
12. ^ Wikizionario (Italian Wiktionary), it.wiktionary.org