Heather Broster
While it might be tempting to assume that the Italian adjective contento is the direct counterpart of the English content, it actually encompasses a slightly broader range of meanings as we’ll soon discover. The most common translations for contento are glad and happy. Like its English counterparts, it denotes a subdued or contained kind of …
In English, we have a remarkable abundance of terms to describe someone who behaves obsequiously towards someone in order to gain favour: bootlicker, sycophant, crawler, brown-nose, suck-up, toady, pufferfish and a few other vulgar options I won’t mention here! leccapiedi bootlicker /lec·ca·piè·di/ – [lekkaˈpjɛdi] Italian, too, has its own range of terms, but the one …
Stare sul pezzo in Italian translates to being “on the ball”, “with it” or “on top of things” in English. It’s the perfect colloquial idiom to describe someone who is alert, attentive, and up-to-date with what’s going on around them. A variation on this idiom is essere sul pezzo, which replaces the verb stare (“to …
Did you know that there are numerous ways to translate the word “crazy“ into Italian? One of the most frequently used translations is the adjective folle, which happens to be our word of the day! folle crazy / foolish The word comes from the Latin follem, meaning inflated ball or bellows, and by extension, an …
Some of you might think this is an unusual choice for the word of the day, but based on recent conversations in our Facebook group, it’s also one of your favourites! Scolapasta, which is made up of two words – the verb scolare (to drain or to strain) and the noun pasta – literally means …
Wherever there are fields with growing crops and birds in the vicinity, you will typically come across a scarecrow, known as spaventapasseri in Italian. They’ve long been used to dissuade these cunning winged gluttons from destroying the harvest. spaventapasseri scarecrow Spaventapasseri is made up of two parts: the verb spaventare (to scare) and passeri, the …