perdere tempo

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Italian

Verb

pèrdere tempo (first-person singular present pèrdo tempo, first-person singular past historic pèrsi tempo or perdétti tempo or (traditional) perdètti tempo or (less common) perdéi tempo, past participle pèrso tempo or perdùto tempo, auxiliary avére)

  1. (intransitive) to waste time, to mess around
    • 13th c., Guittone d'Arezzo, Ciascuno esemplo ch'è dell'omo saggio, collected in Le rime di Guittone d'Arezzo, Bari: Laterza, published 1940, page 203, lines 1–4:
      Ciascuno esemplo ch’è dell’omo saggio
      da la gente de’ esser car tenuto;
      e un n’audivi, qual eo vi diraggio:
      mentre omo dorme lo tempo ha perduto.
      Every example of a wise man must be held precious by the people, and I heard one of them I will now tell to you: when a man sleeps, he has wasted time
    • 1310s, Dante Alighieri, “Canto III”, in Purgatorio, lines 76–78; republished as Giorgio Petrocchi, editor, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, 2nd revised edition, Florence: publ. Le Lettere, 1994:
      ditene dove la montagna giace,
      sì che possibil sia l’andare in suso;
      ché perder tempo a chi più sa più spiace
      Tell us where the mountain slopes, so that the going up be possible, for to lose time irks him most who most knows.