Bando alle ciance is a wonderfully evocative, albeit somewhat old-fashioned Italian expression meaning either “enough chatter” or “stop the small talk”. As you can imagine, it is used to cut short unnecessary talking, nonsense, or gossip, so as to shift focus immediately to the main topic.
bando alle ciance
enough chatter / stop the small talk
The word ciance, which is the plural of ciancia, refers to idle gossip and idle chatter, which often don’t correspond to the truth. It is almost always used in the plural and derives from the verb cianciare meaning “to prattle / chatter / talk nonsense”.
In addition to meaning announcement (especially in the case of a public competition announcement or call for bids), bando can also be translated as ban or interdiction, and this is the meaning we are dealing with today. For example, mettere bando a qualcuno means “to banish someone” while porre al bando means “to ban.”
Adesso bando alle ciance e cominciamo a lavorare.
Right, that’s enough talk. Let’s get to work.
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
