Oggi non esco a pranzo, ho la schiscetta. This is the kind of thing you’d hear in any Milanese office when the clock strikes lunchtime. It simply means “’I’m not going out for lunch, I brought my lunchbox,” but doesn’t schiscetta just sound so much more fun?
In Italian we have an incredibly specific vocabulary for how and what we eat. Whether we’re mopping up sauce with a piece of bread, eating way more than we should, or barely picking at our food (how can one, I wonder!), we have a word for each moment. And sometimes more than one.
I’m not going to cover the full vocabulary in this article, because that would take a small dictionary (and I’ve already covered some alternative ways to say “eat” in Italian). So what you’ll find below are just some fun and wonderfully specific ones we frequently use in daily conversation.
La schiscetta
The schiscetta from the initial example is the lunchbox we bring to work, usually stocked with what we prepared the night before or made with leftovers.
The word comes from schiscià, which in Milanese dialect means to press or to squash, referring to the way the lid presses down on the food inside. Outside of Lombardy, this object goes by all sorts of other names, but schiscetta is perhaps the funniest one.
Oggi mi sono portato la schiscetta con gli avanzi di ieri.
Today I brought a packed lunch with yesterday’s leftovers.
Fun fact for you: the lunch box in Italy made history as a piece of design when, in 1952, industrialist Renato Caimi created “La 2000,” an aluminum lunch box with a hermetic seal that became a cult object of the Italian economic boom.
La mangiata
I bet you already know mangiare, the verb that means “to eat” in Italian, so you can probably guess the meaning of this noun. It refers to a big, indulgent meal, the kind where you eat so much you need a long pause afterward.
It can be used with the verb farsi (literally, to make oneself), as in farsi una mangiata, meaning something along the lines of “to have yourself a big meal.”
Ci siamo fatti una mangiata di pesce.
We had a massive fish meal.
Or as an exclamation, preceded by che:
Che mangiata! Era tutto buonissimo.
What a feast! Everything was delicious.
L’abbuffata
When the love for food gets out of hand, that’s an abbuffata, which is a fun-sounding, highly expressive Italian word for an over-the-top eating session.
You might notice it sounds similar to buffo, the Italian word for funny or silly. While not directly related to laughter, its root is tied to the dialectal word buffa, which means “toad” in some southern Italian dialects, which gives us the hilarious mental image of someone eating until they blow up like one!
Like mangiata, it’s usually paired with the verb farsi:
Ieri sera ci siamo fatti un’abbuffata di sushi.
Last night we had an absolute sushi binge.
There’s also an iconic Italian movie titled La grande abbuffata, about four men who, tired of their boring lives, decide to end it all by eating themselves to death. A bit extreme, sure, but it gives you a pretty good sense of what abbuffata means!
La scorpacciata
This is similar to abbuffata, but not quite the same: an abbuffata is when you overdo it across the board, while a scorpacciata is when you eat way too much of one thing in particular. It comes from corpo (body) and well, after a proper scorpacciata, the evidence is right there, written all over our pancia (belly)!
Like the previous two, it’s paired with farsi:
A Napoli ci siamo fatti una scorpacciata di pizza che non ti dico.
In Naples we stuffed ourselves with so much pizza, you have no idea.
Note: the expression che non ti dico, literally “that I can’t even tell you,” is a very common way of saying something that is beyond words.
L’assaggino
From assaggiare (to taste), an assaggino is a tiny taste of something. The -ino suffix is how we create diminutives in Italian, so assaggino is essentially a “little taste” — small and innocent.
It could be your friend reaching across the table with a fork and asking posso fare un assaggino? (Can I have a little taste?).
Or perhaps a waiter might use it to suggest a tasting selection as a starter:
Come antipasto, possiamo fare degli assaggini, così provate tutto.
For starters, we can do a selection of small tastings, so you get to try everything.
La scarpetta
You might have already heard this one, because it’s become pretty iconic when talking about Italian food. Specifically, it’s fare la scarpetta, the act of using a piece of bread to wipe your plate clean of every last drop of sauce.
Literally, scarpetta means “little shoe,” which sounds totally unrelated to food, I know. There are different theories about the connection: some say the piece of bread resembles the shape of a small shoe when dragged across the plate, while others link it to scarpetta as a type of cheap, inelegant shoe, suggesting the gesture was seen as something only the hungry and desperate would do.
All a bit of a stretch, to be honest. But we all love doing la scarpetta, even if table etiquette frowns upon it!
Non fare la scarpetta con questo ragù sarebbe un crimine!
Not mopping up this ragù sauce with bread would be a crime!
Scofanare / Scofanarsi
This is a very informal verb that means eating greedily, and not really with much grace.
Hanno già scofanato tutti i biscotti? Li avevo appena comprati!
They’ve already wolfed down all the cookies? I had just bought them!
The reflexive form scofanarsi is the one you’ll hear most often. It’s what we’d say about someone who ate an entire tray of lasagna in record time.
A pranzo ti sei scofanato una teglia di pasta al forno e adesso vuoi cenare?
You wolfed down a whole tray of baked pasta at lunch and now you want dinner?
Mangiare a quattro palmenti
Literally, this expression means “to eat with four millstones,” which is already a strong visual, right?
A palmento was once the grinding stone in a water mill, and the link here is simple: our jaws are the millstones, our food is the grain, and we’re grinding through it all at full speed. Multiply that by four, and you get the picture: eating with total, unrestrained appetite.
Vogliono fare i fini e poi li inviti a cena e si mettono a mangiare a quattro palmenti!
They act all refined, but then you invite them over for dinner and they eat like there’s no tomorrow!
Ingozzarsi
With ingozzarsi we’re still in the territory of eating too much. It means to stuff ourselves with food until we physically can’t take another bite, and doing so in a greedy, rushed, and not exactly graceful way. It always has a negative tone to it.
The verb comes from gozzo, the bird’s craw. So ingozzarsi literally evokes the image of filling our throat the way a bird cramming food down its throat… not a pretty picture, but a very effective one!
Smettila di ingozzarti, nessuno ti porta via il piatto!
Stop stuffing yourself, nobody’s taking your plate away!
Spazzolare
The literal meaning of spazzolare is to brush, as in, what we do with a broom or a hairbrush. But when it comes to food, we use it to mean eating something so fast and so completely that the plate looks like it’s been swept clean.
There’s a fun visual to it: one moment the food is there, the next whoosh… vanished without a trace! You’ll hear us use this verb both with and without the reflexive form (spazzolare and spazzolarsi) and they mean the same thing:
I bambini hanno spazzolato tutto il tiramisù.
I bambini si sono spazzolati tutto il tiramisù.
The kids devoured all the tiramisù.
Sfizioso
Something sfizioso is tempting, appetizing, and maybe a little unexpected (not our usual everyday dish). The verb comes from sfizio, meaning “whim,” so describing something as sfizioso is like saying it satisfies a little craving.
It could be a plate of little arancini, a stuffed focaccia from a street vendor, a tempting tagliere of cheeses and cured meats. It doesn’t have to be small, it just has to make you think ooh, I want that.
There’s no perfect equivalent in English, but “tempting little treat” probably comes closest.
Fermiamoci in rosticceria, ho voglia di qualcosa di sfizioso per cena!
Let’s stop at the deli, I fancy some tempting little treats for dinner!
Stucchevole
The pronunciation of stucchevole might remind you of stucco, and in a way, that’s how this kind of food feels: like our mouth has been wallpapered with sugar, and we desperately need a glass of water.
We use it for food that’s lovely at first bite but quickly becomes too much, like an overly sugary cake or a dessert so rich in butter that makes us push the plate away halfway through.
La torta è buona, si sente che è fresca, ma dopo un po’ la trovo stucchevole.
The cake is good, you can tell it’s fresh, but after a while I find it sickly.
Stopposo
Stopposo is the adjective we use to describe something that’s dry, usually referring to meat. The classic example is overcooked chicken breast that has us chewing for what feels like an eternity.
The word comes from stoppa (tow), the rough, coarse fiber used in old rope, which is a pretty accurate description of what stopposo food feels like between our teeth.
Il panino era buono, ma il pollo era decisamente stopposo.
The sandwich was good, but the chicken was way too dry.
Sciapo
We describe food as sciapo when it’s lacking salt: the ingredients might be fine, the technique might be correct, but the flavour is missing. A bit like bread in Tuscany, which is famously made without salt (Tuscan bread lovers, don’t come for me. I know it’s a signature quirk, not a flaw!)
Questa minestra è un po’ sciapa, non trovi?
This soup is a bit bland, don’t you think?
Immangiabile
The adjective immangiabile is beautifully transparent: in– (not) + mangiabile (edible). Simply put, “inedible.”
But we don’t just use it for food that’s genuinely awful, we might also drop it for anything that’s even slightly disappointing, because when it comes to eating, non ci sono mezze misure (there are no half measures)!
Questa pasta è immangiabile, hanno messo troppo peperoncino nel sugo.
This pasta is inedible, they put way too much chilli pepper in the sauce.
Valentina Nicastro is a travel writer in love with her home country, Italy. Having travelled widely around the globe, she realised there was more to explore closer to home and decided to put the passport aside for a while. When she is not immersed in documenting Italy, you’ll find her donning her communication consultant hat, weaving words as a content writer and bridging linguistic divides as a translator.
