The Italian word for what we call a dressing gown in English is vestaglia. It derives from the word veste meaning dress, clothing or garment.
Vestaglia is a feminine noun, and its plural form is vestaglie.
la vestaglia
the dressing gown
una vestaglia
a dressing gown
le vestaglie
the dressing gowns
delle vestaglie
(some) dressing gowns
Elena si è messa la vestaglia non appena è scesa dal letto.
Elena put on her dressing gown as soon as she got out of bed.
The suffixes -aglia and -iglia are used to create female collective nouns that denote what Daniela Gobetti calls the “rough” version of the basic noun. Some other examples include:
- gente (people) > gentaglia (mob, rabble)
- nuvola (cloud) > nuvolaglia (mass of clouds)
- cane (dog) > canaglia (scoundrel, lowlife)
A similar garment is the accappatoio which is the Italian word for bathrobe.
Che differenza c’è tra una vestaglia e un accappatoio? – La stoffa dell’accappatoio è più assorbente e si asciuga più facilmente.
What’s the difference between a dressing gown and a bathrobe? – The fabric of the bathrobe is more absorbent and dries more easily.
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.
