vedovare

Forms

vedovare (first-person singular present védovo, first-person singular past historic vedovài, past participle vedovàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old Italian forms include vedoare, vedovar and the participles veduvata and viduata.^[2]

Etymology

Most modern dictionaries take it as an Italian formation: it is from Italian vedovo + -are, or from the feminine vedova.^{[3][4][5][6][7][1]} Zingarelli and the GDLI give the Latin verb viduō (“to widow; to deprive”) as its model, and DEI, followed by the TLIO, takes it as an adaptation of that verb, which DEI calls Late Latin and cites from Suetonius; de Vaan records it from Lucretius on.^{[8][9][10][2][11]} Wiktionary gives both explanations.^[1]

The base word continues Latin viduus (“deprived of husband or wife”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Indo-European *h₁ui-dʰh₁-eu-o- (“separated”).^[11] Its cognates include Old Irish fedb (“widow”) and Old High German wituwa (“widow”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is an anonymous poem from Urbino of the 13th century, in the figurative sense “to deprive (of something or someone), to leave empty”.^[2] The literal sense “to make a widow or widower” is recorded in the 14th-century Italian translation of Guido delle Colonne's history of Troy.^[12][2]

Semantic evolution

In Ceffi's Florentine version of the Troy story (1324) the Trojans fear that le mogli crudelmente si vedranno vedovare de' loro mariti (“the wives will cruelly see themselves widowed of their husbands”).^[2][9] The TLIO also records it of a mother's loss of her son and of the Virgin Mary, and in the sense “to live as a widow”.^[2] DEI dates this intransitive sense from an unpublished artists' letter.^[10]

Later the verb was a literary word for depriving of anything: Chiabrera has the pronominal vedovarsi of branches stripped of leaves, Pindemonte's Odyssey says that Ulysses dell'unic'occhio vedovò la fronte of Polyphemus (“widowed his brow of its single eye”), and Monti uses it of streets left empty of people.^[13][10][6] The GDLI records it also of depriving a church of its pastor, of plundering, and of mutilating.^[9]

Timeline

• 1200s – An anonymous Urbino poem uses the verb figuratively.^[2]
• 1308 – Zingarelli's date of first record.^[8]
• 1324 – Ceffi's history of the Trojan war uses vedovare “to widow”.^[2]
• 1333 – A Pistoia history uses the participle vedovate of widowed wives.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, literary) To widow, to leave someone, usually a woman, without a spouse: La guerra vedovò molte giovani spose.^{[3][4][5][8][6][1]}
2. (transitive, literary, figurative) To deprive of someone or something; to leave empty or deserted: una valle vedovata dei suoi abitanti.^{[3][4][8][6][7][1]}
3. (intransitive, obsolete) To live as a widow or widower.^[3][8][7][2]
4. (pronominal, obsolete) vedovarsi: to be left without someone or something.^[8][7]

Related words

• vedova
• vedovo
• vedovanza
• Latin viduus

Usage notes

The present is stressed on the first syllable, védovo, spelled like the noun vedovo.^[4][5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d 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 Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b c d Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
7. ^ a b c d Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
8. ^ a b c d e f Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ 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, 697
10. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3999
11. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
13. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET