For the first year of my son’s life, he had a fairly strong preference for his father, constantly wanting to be held by him and searching for him when he wasn’t around. Now that he’s a little older, he has become much more of a mammone, which is the word for a mama’s boy (or …
The generic word used to indicate any woman, other than the mother, who takes care of a child is tata (feminine, plural: tate) in Italian. Some possible translations in English include babysitting, nanny and childminder. Usually, tata denotes a woman whose full-time profession is childminding, rather than a teenager or young woman who occasionally babysits. …
The word for an artist in Italian is artista. Despite the -a ending, this noun applies to both male and female artists, with the respective plurals being artisti (for men or mixed groups) and artiste (for women). One way of telling whether the artist in question is male or female is by looking at the …
A person who is always ready to start an argument or pick a fight, often over trivial matters, is an attaccabrighe in Italian. The closest English translations are troublemaker and quarrelsome person. Because it is an invariable noun, its form does not change if you are talking about a woman or multiple people. The word …
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 …
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 …