Aiuto, which means help or aid, is arguably one of the most useful Italian words you can learn. After all, you never know when you might find yourself in need of assistance in a foreign country! The noun aiuto is masculine, and used with the following articles: Aiuto comes from the Latin adiutus which in …
The word for a nail, as in the covering on the upper surface of the tip of the finger and toe in primates, is unghia in Italian. If you want to specify which part of the body you are referring to, you can use the terms le unghie delle mani (lit. the nails of the …
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 …