Picture yourself speeding down a street, and at an intersection, you find yourself having to make a sharp turn to avoid a collision with the building on the corner. If you do end up hitting that corner, it’s safe to say you’ve made quite a significant mistake.
From this very scenario arises the idiomatic expression prendere una cantonata. While it literally translates to “hitting the corner of a building at an intersection of two streets,” metaphorically, it signifies making a misstep, committing a blunder or allowing yourself to be tricked.
prendere una cantonata
to mess up / make a blunder
You might prendere una cantonata if you’re duped into investing a substantial amount of money in something of minimal value, or if you reprimand someone, only to realise that you got the wrong end of the stick.
Ma come hai fatto a prendere una cantonata simile?
How could you mess up like that?
The term cantonata is derived from cantone (corner), which, in turn, originates from canto. Canto can refer to either the point where two inner walls meet within a room or space, or the juncture of two outer walls at an intersection of a building.
Another expression featuring this word is a ogni cantonata, which means all over the place (or literally, “on every corner”).
A synonym for this idiom is prendere un granchio, which literally means to catch a crab. This expression has its roots in the realm of sport fishing. When you cast your line into the sea, there’s always a chance a crab might take the bait instead of a fish. In such a scenario, the crab typically puts up a vigorous struggle, often leading the angler to mistakenly believe they’ve hooked a substantial catch.
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.
