One of my favourite Italian words of all time is the onomatopoeic paffuto which translates as chubby or plump in reference to people and certain body parts. Unlike grasso (fat) which could be interpreted as an insult, paffuto has a cute ring to it and tends to be used to describe children more than adults. …
The Italian translation for magnificent is magnifico. Both words can ultimately be traced back to the Latin magnifĭcus, which is a combination of magnus (big) and facere (to do). Because magnifico is an adjective, the ending changes depending on whether you are talking about a masculine, feminine or plural subject. Se sali in cima alla …
The Italian translation for sweet and sour, as in a sweet food or drink with a sour aftertaste produced by vinegar or lemon, is agrodolce. Derived from the French aigre-doux, it is a combination of the words agro (tart, sour) and dolce (sweet). A very popular sauce in Italy is salsa agrodolce, a traditional sweet-and-sour …
The way you would translate fed up or sick and tired in Italian is stufo. I personally found this word quite easy to remember when I first started learning the language because the “uff” sound that makes up the word’s core is reminiscent of a grumble or sigh of annoyance. Because stufo is an adjective, …
An interesting adjective in Italian is entusiasta which, given its resemblance to the English, you might have guessed means enthusiastic. Unlike many other Italian adjectives, which have a masculine form ending in -o and a feminine form ending in -a, the final letter of entusiasta does not change according to the gender. So, for example, …
The Italian word for surprise is sorpresa (feminine, plural: sorprese), which is the past participle of the verb sorprendere (to surprise). Both the English and Italian terms can trace their origin back to the medieval Latin verb superprehendere (to seize). Surprises can be broadly divided into two categories: belle sorprese (nice surprises) and brutte sorprese …