The Italian word for phone number is numero di telefono (masculine, plural: numeri di telefono). All About Italian Phone Numbers Landline numbers (numeri fissi) always start with the digit 0 and are 6 to 11 digits long. For example, in the city of Turin where we used to live, all landline numbers have the area …
The other day, my husband and I decided to watch Johnny Stecchino, an Italian comedy from the early 1990s directed by and starring the fantastically funny Roberto Benigni. The story follows Dante, a naive yet kind-hearted bus driver and part-time banana thief, whose uncanny physical resemblance to Sicilian mobster-turned-police informant Johnny Stecchino lands him in …
You may be surprised to learn that a word Italians commonly used to denote the toilet bowl is water! It was abbreviated from the dated English term water closet, which is just another name for a typical flush toilet, or more broadly, the small room containing said toilet. Be aware, however, that in Italian the …
The word for bottle in Italian is the similar-sounding bottiglia (feminine, plural: bottiglie). Unlike many Italian words which can be traced directly to Latin, bottiglia comes from the Spanish botilla meaning wine vessel. Drinks generally come in two types: bottiglie di plastica (plastic bottles) or bottiglie di vetro (glass bottles). When talking about small bottles …
A noun that describes someone who loves sleeping, or habitually sleeps in a lot, especially in the morning, is dormiglione (masculine, plural dormiglioni) or dormigliona (feminine, plural dormiglione) in Italian. The best translations are sleepyhead and late riser. Today’s word is the combination of the verb dormire (to sleep) and the suffix -one which is …
When I was young, our backyard was home to a massive pear tree, so every summer, I’d clamber to the top to collect the juiciest pears, which my parents would then use to make pear pie and wine. Those were the days! The Italian word for pear is, unsurprisingly, pera (feminine, plural: pere). The origin …