vietare

Forms

vietare (first-person singular present vièto or viéto, first-person singular past historic vietài, past participle vietàto, auxiliary avére)^[1] Old and dialect forms include Old Italian vetare, Old Italian vedare and Old Italian viettare.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vetō (“to forbid”).^[4][5][6][1] Old Latin also had the form votāre.^[7][3]

The verb is pan-Romance except for Romanian.^[3] The same word is Old French veer, Occitan vedar, Catalan vedar, Spanish vedar and Portuguese vedar,^[5][8] and in the Engadine it is vader.^[8]

The stressed short ⟨ĕ⟩ of the Latin verb gave the diphthong ⟨ie⟩ of forms such as ⟨vièto⟩, and this was then extended to the whole verb, replacing the older unstressed vetare.^[9][10]

The origin of the Latin verb is unclear.^[4][11] DELI and DEI see it as an old religious term that passed into the language of law, with no clear relatives in the other Indo-European languages.^[4][3] Nocentini compares Old Welsh gwetid (“says”) and Old English cweþan (“to say”), which survives in archaic English quoth, and supposes that the Latin verb first meant uttering a sacred formula, a sense lost in the other languages.^[5] Devoto thought the meaning stood in the way of linking it with Indo-European forms that would fit the sounds.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI dates the sense “to order with authority that something not be done” to Dante (1300–1313), with the participle vetata and the adjective veto “forbidden” in Jacopone da Todi before 1306.^[4] The participle vietato is older still: before 1294 Brunetto Latini wrote of the forbidden fruit, Fece loro mangiare lo pomo vietato (“he made them eat the forbidden apple”).^[4]

Semantic evolution

Dante has the impersonal e ’l troppo star si vieta (“and staying too long is forbidden”) in the Inferno.^[2] In early use the verb could also mean “to avoid” (Passavanti) and “to refuse” (Guittone), and Boccaccio uses it intransitively.^[3]

Tommaseo noted that vietare covers both the order not to do something and the hindering of it by acts, so that things too can be said to “forbid” in the sense of preventing.^[12] The literary uses keep this sense of obstruction: Alfieri has the winds that seemed to bar him from his native land, and Montale a single seal that blocked the clear sky.^[11][13] Foscolo's le mal vietate Alpi “the ill-defended Alps” shows the participle in the literary sense “defended”.^[14]

The participle vietato is common on notices and in sport, where a colpo vietato is a foul blow, more often called colpo proibito.^[14]

Timeline

• Before 1294 – Brunetto Latini uses the participle vietato.^[4]
• Before 1306 – Jacopone da Todi has vetata and the adjective veto “forbidden”.^[4][6]
• 1300–1313 – Dante uses vietare “to forbid”.^[4]
• 13th century – Vietativo appears in the translation of Albertano.^[3]
• 14th century – Divieto “ban” is first recorded.^[5]
• 18th century – Salvini uses vietabile.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To forbid or prohibit: to order someone not to do something, or to stop an action by a rule or law: Il regolamento vieta l’uso del telefono in classe. Also with di and the infinitive, and in the set phrase nulla vieta che “nothing prevents”, “it is possible that”.^{[6][13][10][14]}
2. (literary) To keep someone away from a place, bar their way.^[6][13][14]
3. (literary) To obstruct or block, as a view.^[11][15]

Word family

• vietato
• divietare
• divieto
• vietabile
• vietamento
• vietativo
• vietatore

Related words

• veto
• Latin vetō

Usage notes

The present is vièto, with the diphthong kept in the unstressed forms (vietiamo), and Wiktionary also gives viéto with a closed vowel.^[1][9][10] The participle is common in notices with the infinitive, as in vietato fumare.^[10][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 4050
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
11. ^ a b c Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b c d e Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli