uccidere

Forms

uccidere (first-person singular present uccìdo, first-person singular past historic uccìsi, past participle uccìso, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian ucìdere.^[2] Poetry of the 13th and 14th centuries also has Old Italian ancidere “to kill, wound gravely”.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Italian occidere, inherited from Latin occīdō (“to strike down, kill”), formed from caedō (“to cut, fell”) with the prefix ob- of hostility.^[5][6][7][1] According to Festus, a man ⟨occisus⟩ had been killed by a blow, while one ⟨necatus⟩ had been killed without one.^[5] The verb belonged to popular Latin, where the literary interficiō was little used: Petronius has it once against many uses of the verb that became Italian.^[5]

The diphthong of the simple verb became /iː/ in the compound, and the /o/ became /u/ before a double consonant in an unstressed syllable, as in ubbidire and ufficio.^[8] The verb is also Romanian ucide.^[6][9] Old French ocire and Old Occitan aucire come from a variant Vulgar Latin *aucīdere, and Old Italian ⟨ancidere⟩ came from the Occitan verb.^[6][9][3]

The simple verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kh₂eyd- (“to cut, hew”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in the Novellino, at the end of the 13th century, both for “to kill” and for the reflexive “to kill oneself”.^[5] GDLI quotes it: “Ettor uccidea li Greci e sostenea i Troiani e scampavali da morte” (Hector killed the Greeks and held up the Trojans and saved them from death).^[2] GRADIT and Nocentini date the word from Dante's Convivio (1304–1308).^[7][6]

Semantic evolution

Dante uses the verb figuratively for “to destroy, abolish” in 1304–1308, and an Italian version of Pietro de' Crescenzi about 1350 for “to make perish”, also of plants.^[5][4] The noun uccisione is in the Novellino, the participle ucciso in the 14th century (anciso in Rustico Filippi before 1300), and uccisore, a learned word from Latin occisor, in Torquato Tasso in 1581.^[5][6]

In modern use the verb is often hyperbolic, of heat, boredom or effort that wear a person out.^[7][11] Phrases include uccidere il vitello grasso “to kill the fatted calf”, and the proverb ne uccide più la gola che la spada, gluttony kills more than the sword.^[7][12]

Timeline

• End of the 13th century – The Novellino uses uccidere and uccisione.^[5]
• Before 1300 – Rustico Filippi uses the participle anciso.^[5]
• 1304–1308 – Dante uses the verb in the Convivio, also figuratively.^[5][7]
• About 1350 – The sense “make perish” is recorded.^[5]
• 1581 – Torquato Tasso uses uccisore.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To kill, to take the life of a person or an animal, especially by violence: Il cacciatore uccise un cinghiale.^[7][13][14]
2. Of a cause, to bring someone to death, often slowly; used absolutely, to be deadly.^[7][13][11]
3. To make plants or crops perish, to destroy.^[7][13][14]
4. (hyperbolic) To exhaust, wear out, or cause great pain: Queste scale mi uccidono.^[7][13][11]
5. (figurative) To stifle or oppress something: a regime that kills freedom.^[7][13][14]
6. (reflexive, uccidersi) To kill oneself; to kill one another; to die in an accident.^[13][14][11]

Word family

• uccisione
• ucciso
• uccisore
• ucciditore

Related words

• Latin occido

References

1. ^ a b c 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. 21, 490
3. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 1025
4. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3942
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier, p. 458
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ 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 Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
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. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse