Italian Costui Colui: The Literary Demonstratives (C1)

Open Manzoni’s I promessi sposi at almost any page and you will meet a strange-looking pronoun: costui, costei, colui, coloro. They look like fossils, and in a sense they are. Italian costui colui is the family of literary demonstrative pronouns that modern Italians almost never use in conversation, but that fill nineteenth-century novels, legal sentences, and ironic newspaper editorials.

This guide walks through italian costui colui for the C1 reader: what the six forms mean, when they take a faintly negative tone, how colui che builds the classic “the one who” relative clause, and why a Lecce magistrate writing a sentence in 2024 still reaches for colui the way her great-grandfather did in 1924.

The six forms of italian costui colui in one table

Before the rules, the inventory. The system has six forms, organised in two columns: one for “this person here” (close to the speaker in the text) and one for “that person there” (more distant or generic). Both columns inflect for gender and number, unlike altrui which has only one form.

All six are pronouns. They stand in for a noun, never accompany one. You will never see costui uomo or colei donna: the noun is replaced, not modified. The corresponding adjectival demonstratives are questo and quello, which behave like any other Italian adjective.

Costui, costei, costoro: the close pejorative

A judge in Padova writing a criminal sentence uses costui for the defendant. A journalist describing a politician they dislike uses costui instead of his name. A nineteenth-century narrator commenting on a minor character writes costui era avido e meschino. Three different contexts, one shared feature: a slight distance, often a slight disdain, between the writer and the person referred to.

Italian costui colui is not always pejorative, but costui in particular often carries that flavour. It says “this person we have been talking about, whom I am pointedly not naming again”. Italian speakers who reach for costui in writing are usually keeping the subject at arm’s length on purpose.

• Costui sostiene di essere innocente. (This man claims to be innocent.)
• Costei ha firmato il contratto senza leggerlo. (This woman signed the contract without reading it.)
• Costoro non hanno alcuna prova. (These people have no evidence.)

In modern conversation, all three sound either legalistic or theatrically literary. A friend telling you about her annoying neighbour will say quello lì, quella tipa, quel tale, not costui. If you do hear costui in spoken Italian, you are probably in court, in a play, or being teased.

Colui, colei, coloro: the neutral distant

If costui is the close pronoun with a slight edge, colui is the distant one with a neutral tone. It points to someone removed from the immediate context: a hypothetical person, a generic figure, a third party in a legal document. The pejorative shading drops away. Where costui hisses, colui declares.

The most common environment for colui is the structure colui che, “the one who”, which we will see in its own section below. On its own, colui appears mostly in moral or philosophical statements about an unspecified person.

• Colui che paga decide. (The one who pays decides.)
• Colei che lo conosce non si fida. (The woman who knows him does not trust him.)
• Coloro che hanno votato a favore dovranno rispondere. (Those who voted in favour will have to answer for it.)

Notice how all three examples imply an abstract or generic subject. Colui is the pronoun of choice when you want to talk about a class of people defined by an action, without naming any specific individual. Newspaper opinion pieces and philosophy textbooks use it constantly.

Colui che: the literary relative construction

The most productive use of italian costui colui today is the relative pattern colui che, colei che, coloro che. It corresponds to English “the one who”, “she who”, “those who”. You will find it in legal Italian, in religious texts, in proverbs, and in the kind of newspaper headline that wants to sound serious.

The construction takes a verb in the third person singular (for colui che and colei che) or plural (for coloro che). The relative clause defines the person; the main clause says something about them.

• Colui che semina vento raccoglie tempesta. (He who sows the wind reaps the storm. Proverb.)
• Coloro che sono presenti possono votare. (Those who are present may vote.)
• Colei che ha curato l’edizione non firmerà la prefazione. (The woman who edited the volume will not sign the preface.)

The everyday Italian equivalent is chi: chi semina vento raccoglie tempesta, chi è presente può votare. The two are interchangeable in meaning. The difference is register. Chi is neutral and modern. Colui che is formal, biblical, or proverbial. Pick one based on the room you are writing for.

Register: where these pronouns live

A useful test: if the sentence could fit in a Manzoni paragraph, a court sentence, or a Sunday homily, italian costui colui belongs. If it could only fit in a WhatsApp message or a dinner conversation, switch to questo, quello, chi, quello che, quella tipa. The line is not about grammar; it is about the social weight of the discourse.

• legal sentence: «L’imputato, costui che ha agito con dolo, è condannato.»
• opinion editorial: «Colui che riteneva la riforma un fallimento ha cambiato idea.»
• moral essay: «Coloro che credono nella libertà devono difenderla ogni giorno.»
• literary fiction: «Costei era stata bella, ma il tempo non perdona.»

Outside these four genres, the forms feel out of place. A Florentine teenager telling her friend about a guy at the bar will not say costui. She will say ‘sto tipo qui, quello lì, quel tale, all variants that perform the same pointing function in casual register.

What modern Italian uses instead

Spoken Italian replaces costui and colui with simpler structures. Knowing the mapping helps you both read older texts and produce natural conversation.

The translation is one-to-one in meaning. The difference is the register knob. Whenever you draft formal Italian and feel the urge to write colui che, ask yourself first whether chi would work just as well. Nine times out of ten it does, and the sentence will feel less stiff.

Manzoni, Verga, Calvino: spotting them in fiction

Italian literary tradition leans on these pronouns. Manzoni uses costui and costei as a tool to mark social judgement: minor characters who behave badly often get costui rather than their name. Verga uses colui in his Sicilian novels to evoke the impersonal voice of the village commenting on individual fates. Even Calvino, who writes much closer to modern speech, slips into colui che when he wants a sentence to feel proverbial.

For a B2-C1 reader of fiction, recognising these forms instantly is a small but real comprehension boost. You stop tripping over a strange-looking word, identify it as a pronoun, and read on. The narrative voice keeps moving without a glossary detour. The same applies to film subtitles for older Italian cinema, court reporting in newspapers, and the language of papal encyclicals or political speeches that aim at a solemn register.

Common mistakes with italian costui colui

Three errors recur in B2-C1 essays when learners discover these pronouns and try to put them to work.

Using them as adjectives. Costui and colui are pronouns only. Costui uomo is wrong. If you need a demonstrative adjective, use questo or quello: questo uomo, quell’uomo. The literary pronouns refuse to attach to a following noun.

Confusing the close-distant axis. Costui points to someone close in the discourse, often just mentioned. Colui points to someone distant or generic. Mixing them sounds odd to a native ear, like saying “that one” when you mean “this one”. A judge says costui about the person standing in front of her; a philosopher says colui che about an abstract figure.

Forgetting the pejorative shading of costui. Praising someone with costui è un grande uomo sounds wrong in modern Italian. The praise version uses questo è un grande uomo, or simply è un grande uomo. Costui tends to cast a small shadow. Reserve it for neutral or critical statements.

Where these pronouns come from

The strange look of costui, colui, and their siblings becomes less mysterious once you trace them back. They are compound forms: a deictic particle (ecco, “here is”) fused with a Latin pronoun. Costui comes from eccu(m) istum, “here this one”; colui from eccu(m) illum, “here that one”. The plurals costoro and coloro follow the same pattern with the Latin illorum.

This medieval Latin layer is exactly why the forms feel so old. They preserve in their bones a system of pointing that modern Italian has otherwise simplified into questo and quello. The literary register kept the compound forms because writers liked the gravity they bring to a sentence. Spoken Italian let them fall away because two demonstratives were enough.

Knowing the etymology gives you a small bonus: you can read Old Italian or early modern Italian texts without panic. Boccaccio uses these pronouns constantly; so do Petrarca, Ariosto, Tasso, and every legal document down to the codice civile of 1942. Once you see colui as “that one over there”, the strangeness dissolves. The same fused-deictic pattern appears in codesto (from eccu(m) tibi istum, “here this one for you”), which Tuscan dialect kept alive longer than the rest of Italy and which Manzoni famously revived in his Tuscanised second edition.

The French equivalent is the pair celui and celui-ci, which preserves the same close-distant axis. Spanish lost the literary pronouns entirely and uses éste and aquél for both registers. Italian sits in the middle: the literary forms survive in writing, the spoken forms have simplified. The cost-benefit of the system: more shades of register, more forms to learn.

How to pronounce italian costui colui

Each of these pronouns is three syllables with stress on the second. Co-STU-i, co-STEI, co-STO-ro, co-LU-i, co-LEI, co-LO-ro. The final vowel is always its own syllable, never swallowed into a glide. English speakers who pronounce colui as two syllables (cool-wee) flag themselves as non-native immediately. Keep the three beats audible.

The s in costui and costei is the soft Italian s, like in English “sea”, not the harder z sound. The e in colei and costei is open, like in English “bed”. Try saying colei che parla aloud, keeping the second syllable strong: co-LEI che parla. The rhythm should feel like three even beats, with the middle one slightly louder. Native speakers reading aloud a legal text or a Manzoni passage almost slow down naturally on these pronouns, giving them the weight their register requires.

Italian costui colui at a glance

Dialogue: lawyer reading a sentence to her client

Camilla is a lawyer in Bologna. She is reading aloud a passage from a criminal sentence to her client Lorenzo, who is unsettled by the formality. Notice how costui, colei, and coloro appear naturally in the legal text and how Lorenzo translates each one into everyday Italian.

Three things to notice. Camilla uses the literary forms when quoting the sentence, but switches to quest’uomo, quelli che, quei testimoni when explaining. Lorenzo recognises the forms instinctively but finds them archaic. The dialogue stages the exact gap that italian costui colui creates in modern Italian: alive in writing, asleep in speech.

FAQ on italian costui colui

Six questions C1 learners ask when they first meet these pronouns.

Related guides

• italian altrui
• italian demonstratives questo and quello
• the Italian hanging theme
• Treccani entry on costui
• Treccani entry on colui