Heather Broster
Something we all harbour, whether we want to admit it or not, are secrets – some fairly innocent, others more nefarious! In Italian, the word for secret is, quite simply, segreto. segreto Segreto is a masculine noun that takes the following definite and indefinite articles: Luckily for us, segreto and secret are used almost identically. …
Sometimes there are words you cannot help but fall in love with, and for me, the verb sdrucciolare is one of them. It sounds just like what it describes – the act of slipping and falling (or nearly falling) on a very smooth and slippery surface. sdrucciolare to slip / to slide Whereas the more …
Metterci una pietra sopra is an Italian expression meaning to definitively put an unpleasant matter or argument, or to put a painful memory to rest. The imagery is pretty clear – by placing a stone on top of something, it becomes impossible to see and easy to forget. In many ways, it is similar to …
The verb guidare is fairly intuitive; its prefix clearly mirrors the English ‘to guide.’ While that is one possible translation, there is plenty more to discover. Let’s take a look now! guidare Before we begin, it’s worth mentioning that guidare is an -ARE verb, making it fairly easy to conjugate. Here it is in the …
A curious fact about the noun ospite in Italian is that is has a double meaning – it can refer to either a guest or a host. This is because, in Latin, the word hospes, from which ospite derives, alluded to the “reciprocity of the pact of hospitality” – or in other words, the idea …
If, in English, you want to say that somebody’s house, a shop or a restaurant is very close to where you live, you can rely on the very useful expression “a stone’s throw away” or “within a stone’s throw.” In Italian, there is a very similar expression that replaces stones with muskets. Let’s discover it …