The masculine noun stento in Italian is used to describe a situation of severe suffering or privation, much like the word hardship in English. stento hardship It derives from the verb stentare which translates as to struggle, to find difficult or to scrape by. Because stento begins with the letters st-, it takes the following …
Today we’ll be looking at a verb that was suggested by one of the members in our fantastic Facebook community: costeggiare. costeggiare Costeggiare is a regular -are verb, so it can be conjugated in the following manner in the present tense: (io) costeggio (tu) costeggi (lui) costeggia (lei) costeggia (Lei) costeggia (noi) costeggiamo (voi) costeggiate …
I happened to hear today’s word while listening to my favourite Italian radio station, Radio Italia, where they were discussing the unusually hot temperatures that have gripped Italy over the past week. In some places in the south, the mercury has soared past the 40°C / 104°F mark. Arroventato is an adjective that translates as red-hot …
Anyone who knows me is aware of my fondness for whimsical words, and that’s precisely what prompted me to write about the verb squagliare today! I recently came across it in a friend’s Facebook post in which he describes the feeling of “melting” in the 97°F heat currently engulfing Italy. (I must admit, it’s at …
Famigerato is an adjective that derives from the Latin word famigeratus, the past participle of famigerare meaning “to make famous”. In ancient Italian, the original meaning was famous, used in a positive or ironic sense, but over time, the meaning shifted to infamous or notorious. Adjectives such as famigerato always agree with the noun they …
If you find yourself tired of repeatedly using the conjunctions ma (but) and però (but / however), you might be interested in adding a more advanced conjunction to your vocabulary: eppure! In Italian, eppure is used to express a sense of contradiction or surprise. It is often translated as (and) yet, still or but in …