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Concerts, music festivals, television series, professional wrestling matches—these are quite the undertakings. Luckily, there’s a word for the impressive individuals responsible for organizing and overseeing such productions: impresario. In the 1700s, English borrowed impresario directly from Italian, whose noun impresa means “undertaking.” (A close relative is the English word emprise, “an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise,” which, like impresario, traces back to the Latin verb prehendere, meaning “to seize.”) At first English speakers used impresario as the Italians did, to refer to opera company managers, though today it is used much more broadly. It should be noted that, despite their apparent similarities, impress and impresario are not related. Impress is a descendant of the Latin verb pressare, a form of the word premere, meaning “to press.”
Examples of impresario in a Sentence
Michael Barnes, Austin American Statesman, 8 July 2025
The Grammy-winning impresario stands convicted of two counts of a crime -- transportation to engage in prostitution -- that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
—arkansasonline.com, 3 July 2025
The horror impresario outlined three reasons the cyborg sequel performed significantly worse than its predecessor at the box office.
—Ryan Coleman Updated, EW.com, 3 July 2025
The Grammy-winning impresario stands convicted of two counts of a crime — transportation to engage in prostitution — that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
—Michael R. Sisak, Chicago Tribune, 2 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for impresario
Cite this Entry
“Impresario.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impresario. Accessed 29 Jul. 2025.
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impresario
noun
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