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tutto

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Pronunciation

Forms

tutto (feminine tutta, masculine plural tutti, feminine plural tutte)[1] Old and dialect forms include titto, tócto, tucto and tuttu.[2] Old Italian also had a reduplicated tututto “all of it”, used by Dante.[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *tōttus, a variant of Latin tōtus (“whole, entire”).[5][6][1] A form “tottus” is already recorded in the 5th century, when the grammarian Consentius objected to it;[5][4] Meyer-Lübke saw the double ⟨t⟩ as a kind of reduplication, as in Old Italian tututto.[5][4]

The vowel /u/ of the Italian word is not what “tōttus” would give, and there is no agreed explanation.[5][6][7] DELI holds that a Vulgar Latin *tūctus must be reconstructed, as Nigra saw in 1902, and lists proposals: a plural *tūcti shaped by Latin cūnctus (“all together”) (Alessio), or an urban *tŭttus set against a rustic “tōtus” (Devoto).[5][8] DEI thinks the singular was remade on the plural “tutti”, from “*tūcti”, a form that the plural Old French tuit also requires.[9][7] Nocentini points to Romanian, where full “tot” alternates with “tus-” in compounds such as Romanian tustrei (“all three”): Italian may have generalised the unstressed form.[6]

The doubled form is shared by French tout, Catalan tot, Sardinian tottu, Friulian dut and Romanian tot, while Spanish todo and Portuguese todo continue the classical form.[6][4]

The origin of Latin “tōtus” is unknown.[10][1] It has been compared with Oscan touto and Umbrian toto, meaning “city, community”, as the whole body of citizens, from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂ (“people”), the source also of Lithuanian tauta, Old Irish túath and Old High German diot.[6][1] De Vaan finds this and the other proposals unconvincing.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Umbrian confession formula of 1075–80, where the word refers to a plural or collective noun and means “all”.[5][6][11] The singular sense “whole, entire” is recorded in 1219 in the Breve di Montieri.[5] The Ritmo laurenziano has de tutto regno cristiano (“of all the Christian kingdom”).[2]

Semantic evolution

Dante first uses tutto as a noun, “the whole” (1300–13), and as a pronoun, “everyone”, and he puts it before a numeral with e, as in tutti e tre “all three”; the type without e appears in Ser Giovanni before 1385.[5] Boccaccio has the adverb “completely” and the sense “included”.[5] Old Italian often left out the article, as in Dante's di tutta gioia “of full joy”, still a literary use.[12][13]

Many adverbs and conjunctions grew from the word: tuttavia “nevertheless” (13th century), tuttora “still” (13th–14th century), soprattutto (14th century) and dappertutto (17th century).[5][6] Tuttofare, first a noun for a maid of all work, goes back to French bonne à tout faire (1942).[5][6] Recent coinages are tuttala, a flying wing (1961), and tuttologo, someone who claims to know everything (1976).[6]

Timeline

  • 1075–1080 – First record, in the Umbrian confession formula.[5]
  • 1219 – The sense “whole, entire” in the Breve di Montieri.[5]
  • 13th century – Tuttavia in the Ballata di Saladino.[5]
  • 1300–1313 – Dante uses tutto as a noun, “the whole”.[5]
  • 1348–1353 – Boccaccio uses the adverb “completely”.[5]
  • 1942 – Tuttofare, a maid of all work.[5]
  • 1976 – Tuttologo is recorded.[6]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. whole, entire: with a singular noun, the full amount or extent: ha piovuto tutta la notte.[11][14][15]
  2. all, every: with a plural or collective noun, the whole number: ho invitato tutti i miei cugini.[11][14]
  3. Before a numeral with e: tutti e due “both”, tutte e tre “all three”.[5][11]
  4. After a: up to and including: l'ufficio resta chiuso a tutto venerdì.[11][14]
  5. After con: in spite of: con tutto il suo impegno, non ha superato l'esame.[11][15]

Pronoun

  1. everything: gli ho raccontato tutto.[1][12]
  2. (plural) Everyone, everybody: lo sapevano tutti.[5][1]

Adverb

  1. completely, entirely: era tutto bagnato.[5][1]

Noun

  1. The whole: ha venduto il tutto a un antiquario.[5][1]

Word family

  • tuttavia
  • tuttora
  • soprattutto
  • dappertutto
  • tuttalpiù
  • tuttofare
  • tuttotondo
  • tuttala
  • tuttologo
  • postutto

Usage notes

As an adjective tutto normally comes before the article: tutto il giorno, tutte le sere.[12][2] Common phrases are del tutto “completely”, in tutto “altogether”, a tutti i costi “at all costs” and a tutta velocità “at full speed”.[11][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 21, 474
  3. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 1024
  4. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  7. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
  8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 457
  9. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3937
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  12. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  13. ^ Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  14. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  15. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse