Heather Broster
The Italian word morbido may look and sound a lot like the English word morbid but don’t be fooled: these two terms are actually false friends! The correct translation for morbido is soft whereas morbid is morboso. What’s interesting is that morbido and morbid can both be traced back to the same Latin root morbus …
A connoisseur of good food is known as a buongustaio in Italian. It is made up of the following three parts: buon (good) + gustare (to taste / savour) + aio (a suffix used to form agent nouns) Buongustaio is a masculine noun that takes the following definite and indefinite articles: Unlike a mangione (a …
The word for sad in Italian, which comes from the Latin tristis, is triste. Like all other adjectives that end in e, the ending of triste stays the same regardless of whether the subject is masculine or feminine. In its plural form, it becomes tristi. È una situazione molto triste per tutte le persone coinvolte. …
This week, we’ve chosen a classic Italian expression with which I imagine the vast majority of you are already very familiar! 🙂 Grazie! is the equivalent of Thank you! or Thanks! in Italian. It is the plural of the noun grazia which literally translates as grace, gracefulness, favour or generosity depending on the context. Ricordati …
What do you imagine when you hear the word panini? Probably a delicious sandwich, served warm after being toasted to perfection, am I right? What you may not know is that panini is actually the plural of the Italian singular panino, which quite simply means bread roll or sandwich. Etymologically speaking, it is the diminutive …
The word for wind in Italian is vento (masculine, plural: venti) and it comes from the Latin term ventus. Whereas in English, we tend to say It’s windy to describe breezy conditions, Italians have the choice between two expressions: Tira vento. = Lit: It’s pulling wind. C’è vento. = There is wind. Caspita, c’è tanto …