During our most recent trip to Montepulciano, a word that came up multiple times during our wine tasting session at Cantina Crociani was grappolo, the word for a bunch of grapes, but also other things that come in groups as we’ll discover below.
grappolo
bunch / cluster
Grappolo is a masculine noun that takes the following definite and indefinite articles:
- il grappolo = the bunch
- un grappolo = a bunch
- i grappoli = the bunches
- dei grappoli = some bunches
The word, which is the diminutive form of the now-archaic grappo, entered the language via the French grappe, which in turn comes from the Germanic krappa, meaning hook.
Grappolo usually refers to a bunch of grapes as I mentioned above, but if you want to be more specific, you can also say grappolo d’uva.
Prendo questo grappolo d’uva per favore.
I’ll take this bunch of grapes please.
Many of the participants on our trip were wondering what the different parts of a grappolo are called. Each individual grape is known as un acino but in everyday Italian, you may also hear chicco d’uva, with chicco meaning bean or grain. The stalk is called il raspo and the skin of the grape is la buccia. In some varieties, you may also find un seme (a seed) or two inside the grape.
Note: Uva is an interesting word in Italian because, despite being a singular noun (l’uva), it is used to refer to grapes collectively. In a way, it makes sense to refer to grapes as a whole because we rarely eat just one in the way we would an apple or banana. The plural of uva is uve but it is rarely used, if not to distinguish between one type of grape from another.
If we think about it, the collective usage of uva is no different to the English usage of hair (as opposed to hairs, which is exactly what Italians would say – i capelli).
Figuratively speaking, grappolo can be used to describe a group of things, insects, or even people that somehow resemble the shape of a bunch of grapes, such as un grappolo di persone (a cluster of people) or un grappolo d’api (a cluster of bees).
Un grappolo di bambini lo seguiva lungo la strada.
A cluster of children followed him along the road.
If something occurs in bunches or clusters, you can say that they are in / a grappolo, though keep in mind that this usage is often poetic or scientific. For example, I found this phrase on a scientific website about migraines:
Gli attacchi sono brevi… ma estremamente intensi e possono ripetersi “in grappolo” con molti attacchi in pochi giorni…
The attacks are brief… but extremely intense and can recur “in clusters” with many attacks in a few days…
You may have also heard of a cluster bomb, the type that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. This, in Italian, is known as una bomba a grappolo.
Some possible synonyms in Italian for grappolo include:
- gruppo = group
- massa = mass / crowd
- mucchio = heap / pile / stack
- ammasso = mass / heap
- serie = series
- nugolo = host
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.
