Today’s ‘phrase of the week’ is part of our Italian Halloween Word series. On the days leading up to Halloween, we’ll post a word that is related to this spooky time of year. Enjoy! 🦇
Twenty five years ago, when my husband was a child living in Turin, his knowledge of Halloween mostly came from American television shows, movies and books.
Fast forward to the present day and Halloween is celebrated across Italy, albeit without quite the same enthusiasm as in America. Storefronts teeming with scary decorations, jack-o-lanterns, spine-chilling costumes and parties are all part of the norm, as is every child‘s favourite part of Halloween: trick-or-treating!
The way Italians have translated the expression Trick or treat! is Dolcetto o scherzetto? You can hear how it is pronounced below:
Dolcetto o scherzetto?
Trick or treat!
The expression literally translates as little treat or little joke, with the suffix -etto meaning small or little.
- dolce (sweet) > dolcetto (little sweet)
- scherzo (joke / trick / prank) > scherzetto (little joke / trick / prank)
Curiously, before Halloween entered mainstream Italian culture, there was another translation for trick-or-treat that appeared in the Italian version of the Peanuts Halloween comic strip.
Instead of dolcetto o scherzetto, the translator uses the expression la borsa o il malocchio (your money or the evil eye). It is related to a similar idiom la borsa o la vita (your money or your life) which is what thieves yell when they are in the process of robbing someone. (Source: Terminologiaetc.it)
I think I prefer dolcetto o scherzetto, don’t you? 😉
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.
