What comes after il mattino (the morning) and precedes la sera (the evening)? Il pomeriggio (the afternoon), of course! pomeriggio afternoon According to Treccani, this term is a cross between the Latin adjective pomeridiano (the adjective “afternoon”) and meriggio (a synonym for mezzogiorno – midday – that refers to the hours at which the sun …
A soiled diaper. A smelly sock. Or a dead spider in your bathtub. All of these can be succinctly described with a single Italian noun: schifo (gross / yuck / disgust). schifo gross / yuck / disgust The term has roots in the Old French eschif and Old Franconian *skiuhjan, meaning to respect / revere …
The polite way to refer to man in Italian is signore. It differs from uomo in that the latter is less polite and is used to generically refer to a human being or mankind. signore It should come as little surprise that signore is a masculine noun, and therefore, it is used with the following …
Prezzo is a masculine noun that means price or cost in English. It is derived from the Latin pretium meaning value or reward. prezzo price Il venditore mi ha fatto un buon prezzo per questo divano. The seller gave me a good price for this couch. Quanto costa questo libro? Non vedo il prezzo. How much is this …
In English, we have a remarkable abundance of terms to describe someone who behaves obsequiously towards someone in order to gain favour: bootlicker, sycophant, crawler, brown-nose, suck-up, toady, pufferfish and a few other vulgar options I won’t mention here! leccapiedi bootlicker /lec·ca·piè·di/ – [lekkaˈpjɛdi] Italian, too, has its own range of terms, but the one …
Some of you might think this is an unusual choice for the word of the day, but based on recent conversations in our Facebook group, it’s also one of your favourites! Scolapasta, which is made up of two words – the verb scolare (to drain or to strain) and the noun pasta – literally means …