Last night at the dinner table, our six month old son – who usually has the attention span of a goldfish – spent the entire duration of our meal fixated on a toy horse, analysing every hoof, hair and marking on its colourful body. To describe this kind of behaviour, there is a great verb …
Senno di poi is how you would say hindsight in Italian. As in English, it refers to the ability to evaluate or comprehend an event, but only after it has happened. Senno (masculine) means judgement / sense / wisdom, whereas poi is the word for then / later on / after, so the expression literally …
The word for any piece of cloth used for drying dishes or for household cleaning is strofinaccio (masculine, plural: strofinacci) in Italian. If we break it down into its component parts, we can see that it is composed of the verb strofinare (to rub) and the pejorative suffix -accio which denotes something bad or unattractive. …
One way of saying coward in Italian is vigliacco (masculine, plural: vigliacchi). There is also the feminine version vigliacca and its plural vigliacche. For once, we have a word that doesn’t derive directly from Latin but rather the Spanish bellaco meaning wicked or vile. It refers not only to those who, for lack of courage, …
Bislacco is one way of saying eccentric, weird or quirky in Italian. It is thought to derive from the Venetian bislaco, which in turn comes from the Slovene word bezjak meaning silly. It was a nickname given to the Venetians of Friuli and the Slavs of Istria. Because it is an adjective, the ending changes …
The Italian verb indietreggiare is formed from the adverb indietro meaning behind, back or backwards. You can use it to express a number of concepts that translate as to move backwards in English including: 1. to fall back / to retreat Indietreggiare, in the most literal sense of the word, refers to the withdrawal from …