Italian Occurrences of molto gravissima and molto gravissimo: The Italian “hypersuperlative”’s Trajectory from Acceptability (13th to 16th centuries) to Banishment.

This article traces the historical trajectory of the Italian “superlative of the superlative”, with a focus, here, on the forms molto gravissimo and molto gravissima. The trajectory was from widespread acceptability in medieval and early Renaissance Italian to later stigmatisation and exclusion from the normative language. Through a philological survey (which we keep appealing and readable) of texts from the 13th to the 16th century, the study documents how the Latin-derived suffix ‑issimo could be further intensified by popular adverbs such as molto or assai, producing reinforced superlatives that were neither rare nor marginal. Significant occurrences are examined in the Tuscan translation of Albertano of Brescia’s Latin treatises, in Leon Battista Alberti’s I libri della famiglia, and in a Valtellinese list of miracles dated 1493–1494. Our present study considers the sporadic survival of the construction in modern Italian, typically in humorous, substandard, or metalinguistic contexts, including a television sketch by the famous 1960s comedians Sandra Mondaini and Raimondo Vianello. Drawing on (among others) Giovanni Nencioni’s reflections on the historical tightening of grammatical norms, the article argues that the “hypersuperlative” was once a legitimate expressive resource of Italian, later suppressed by prescriptive standardisation but never entirely extinguished in actual usage.