The Italian noun clima means climate. Its origin can be traced back to the late Latin climate-ătis, from the Greek klíma -atos. The term originally denoted a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, but later began to refer to a region as defined by its atmospheric conditions. Although clima ends in the …
The Italian word pasticcio is best translated as mess or muddle in English, and as you have probably guessed, it is used to describe a situation or piece of work that is chaotic, disorganised or poorly executed. It is a masculine noun, so it takes the following definite and indefinite articles: Although the origin of …
Battibecco is an Italian word that can be translated to mean quarrel or squabble in English. It is the combination of the verb battere, which means “to hit” or “to beat”, and the masculine noun becco, which means the beak of a bird. Because it is a masculine noun, it takes the following definite and …
Mano, which is the word for hand in Italian, has its origins in the Latin word manus, which also means hand. A curiosity about this word is that, despite ending in the letter o (which is usually associated with masculine nouns) mano is actually feminine. This is because the Latin manus is a fourth-declension feminine …
A sasso (stone) that has been made smooth and round by the action of water is a ciottolo (pebble) in Italian. It is the diminutive form of ciotto, an archaic word for pebble. Ciottolo is a masculine noun whose plural form is ciottoli. The definite and indefinite articles it takes are as follows: Prese un …
An Italian word that many of our readers and followers on Facebook have been requesting is allora, so let’s dive straight in! Allora is an extremely flexible word in that it can function as an adverb, conjunction or adjective depending on how it is used in a sentence. We’ve decided this article into three sections …