Aragosta (feminine, plural: aragoste) is what Italians call a lobster, everyone’s favourite large marine crustacean (crostaceo) with stalked eyes and pincers. Both the Italian and English words can be traced back to the Latin locusta, the word for locust. It was presumably called as such because of the similarity in appearance between the two creatures!
Typically, lobsters are either bluish green (verde bluastro) or greenish brown (marrone verdastro) so as to blend in with the ocean floor. It is only once they are cooked that they become bright red (rosso vivo) in colour due to the presence of the astaxanthin pigment in their systems.
Adoro mangiare l’aragosta ma è molto costosa.
I love eating lobster but it is very expensive.
Colore aragosta, or lobster pink in English, is an orange-red shade that gets its name from the colour of a lobster when it is cooked.
Did you know that…?
Today polpa di aragosta (lobster meat) is revered as a luxury food item but during colonial times, such was their abundance that they were used as fertiliser and routinely fed to prisoners, apprentices, slaves and children! (Source: History.com)
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
