The word for squid in Italian is the masculine noun calamaro. Technically speaking, calamaro is actually the term for the European squid but in everyday Italian, it has come to refer to the entire squid family. If this word sounds familiar, that’s because in English, we use the plural form calamari to refer to squid …
The Italian word for fox is volpe (feminine, plural: volpi). It derives from the Latin word vulpes of the same meaning. Two species of fox with which most people are familiar are the volpe rossa (red fox) and the volpe artica (arctic fox). In total, there are twelve separate extant species and four fossil species. …
The Italian word for cow is mucca (feminine, plural: mucche). As in English, the word refers to the female of a domesticated breed of ox that produces milk (latte) or beef (carne bovina). To milk a cow in Italian translates as mungere una mucca. Molti allevatori continuano a mungere le loro mucche a mano. Many …
The Italian word granchio, which means crab, comes from the Latin word cancer of the same meaning. It is from this Latin word that we also get the medical term cancro (cancer), since it was thought at the time that the swollen veins surrounding cancerous tumours resembled the limbs of a crab. This association also …
The original meaning of the word cucciolo (plural: cuccioli) in Italian was puppy but it has since expanded to include any type of baby animal. If you want to specify which kind of baby animal you are talking about, simply add the preposition di (of) plus the name of the animal after cucciolo. For example: …
The word for bee in Italian is ape (feminine, plural: api). It comes from the Latin apis of the same meaning. Honeybees (api domestiche or api comuni) live in beehives (alveari) or colonies (colonie) which may consist of as few as 20,000 or more than 100,000 bees. The roles in the hive are as follows: …