Heather Broster
If you wish to convey that something occurs infrequently, or to use an English idiom, “once in a blue moon,” you can employ the Italian idiomatic expression (a) ogni morte di papa. (a) ogni morte di papa rarely / once in a blue moon The literal translation of this phrase is “with every death of …
Today we have a word that I actually heard for the first time while playing the game Memory with my son. The theme of the game was animals, many of which were quite obscure! colibrì hummingbird Colibrì is an invariable masculine noun. Invariable is just a fancy way of saying that its singular and plural …
When learning a foreign language, it’s vital to concentrate on activities and subjects that genuinely interest us in order to stay motivated. For example, if you’re already an enthusiastic reader like I am, you might wish to incorporate various reading exercises into your study routine. This could include reading uncomplicated short stories in your target …
If you want to say that you carry out an activity often or frequently, you can always rely on the useful adverb spesso in Italian. spesso often The adverb originates from the adjective spesso, which means “thick,” sharing both pronunciation and spelling. This, in turn, can be traced back to the Latin word spissus. Spesso …
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 …