The word moquette in Italian comes from the French of the same spelling. It refers to the type of wall-to-wall carpeting found in the most important living spaces of the home, as well as the material from which it is made. Moquette is an invariable feminine noun. Invariable simply means that its form does not …
Most of you have probably come across the words dormire (the verb to sleep) and sonno (the noun sleep) at some point in your Italian studies. But did you know that there is another equally common way to talk about sleep in Italian? The word we’ll be looking at today is nanna, which is a …
There are numerous false friends in Italian and English, but few cause as much confusion as libreria and library. Although they share the same origin – the Latin word libraria – they mean two very different things. The Italian libreria has retained the original Latin meaning, bookshop or bookstore, whereas the English library denotes the …
The word for a shell, or seashell, in Italian is just as beautiful as the object itself: conchiglia. It can be traced back to the Latin conchylium which in turn comes from the Greek konkhýlion, a derivative of kónkhē meaning “concavity”. So if you ever have trouble recalling this word, just remember that shells are …
Modo is a word that means various things in Italian, but three of the most common translations are way, method and manner. It derives from the Latin modus (“measure”) and can easily be recalled by thinking of the word mode in English. Because modo is a masculine noun beginning with a consonant, it takes the …
Biberon is the Italian word for a baby bottle. It entered the language via the French biberon which can be traced back to the Latin verb bibere (to drink). It is an invariable masculine noun, which means that its form does not change in the plural. II bambino preferisce il seno al biberon. The baby …