Heather Broster
Last Christmas, I bought my son three adorable little stuffed owls with the softest fur imaginable. Fast-forward to July, and they all looked like something the cat dragged in. In Italian, the word arruffato perfectly describes the disheveled, ruffled, tangled or matted state of hair or fur, whether it’s on a person, animal, or well-loved …
In Italian, the name for the cosmetic that many women put on their lips (le labbra) in order to look more glamorous is rossetto (lipstick). rossetto lipstick Rossetto is the diminutive form of the colour rosso, which means red, so the literal translation is “little red.” The suffix is -etto, which can also be seen …
Imagine a workplace scenario where there’s a looming deadline, and everyone is scrambling to finish a critical project. However, one employee – let’s call him Marco – is sitting at his desk, meticulously organising paperclips by colour. In Italian, you could metaphorically describe Marco’s engagement in a pointless and trivial activity as pettinare le bambole, …
We may vary in age, gender, and background, but one thing unites us all: when nature calls, we’ve got to answer! Yet, for learners of a new language, knowing how to ask where the toilet is can be tricky. Some expressions are polite, while others are considered slang and a bit too blunt. If you …
The other day, I accidentally left a plastic jug on the hot stove, and as you can imagine, it melted onto the burner within minutes. Although cleaning up the mess was quite a hassle, it did inspire me to write about the adjective fuso, which translates to melted, molten or liquefied. fuso melted / molten …
One of the most common words used to refer to a person’s look, gaze or glance in Italian is sguardo. sguardo gaze / look Sguardo comes from the archaic verb sguardare, which in turn is derived from guardare with the addition of the s- prefix. It is a masculine noun but given that it begins …