Meanings
- The continuum of languages derived from Vulgar Latin spoken in the Italian peninsula between circa 960 and the establishment of the Accademia della Crusca in 1582.
The theory that there was a spontaneous development of an obscure vowel in final position on certain occasions in Old Italian has gained general currency and has been carried on in the works of the main authorities.
1938, George Melville Bolling, Bernard Bloch, Language, volume 14, Linguistic Society of America, page 2241 more example
[… T]his configuration, in which the infinitive clause is a prepositional complement of a noun, could not be found in the documentary evidence of (Tuscan) Old Italian. Another diverging property in this example is the preverbal subject after prepositions, no longer common in Old Italian at the end of the fifteenth century […] [… T]he examples show the use of nonauxiliary verbs. Though similar to Old Italian, this is another difference from contemporary Italian.
2000, Guido Mensching, Infinitive Constructions with Specified Subjects: A Syntactic Analysis of the Romance Languages, pages 30 and 31 (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax; →ISBN, 9780195133035)
Synonyms & antonyms
nounthe Italian language up to the middle of the 16th century
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Old + Italian, on the pattern of Old English
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 古義大利語 /古义大利语
- 古義大利語 /古义大利语continuum of languages
Czech staroitalština, stará italština
- staroitalštinacontinuum of languages
- stará italštinacontinuum of languages
French vieil italien
- vieil italiencontinuum of languages
Italian italiano antico
- italiano anticocontinuum of languages
Latin lingua italica antīqua
- lingua italica antīquacontinuum of languages
Spanish italiano antiguo
- italiano antiguocontinuum of languages
Swedish fornitalienska
- fornitalienskacontinuum of languages
Cite this entry
Old Italian. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Old%20Italian
“Old Italian.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Old%20Italian. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Old Italian,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Old%20Italian.
Source: Old Italian on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.