Gettonato is an adjective that has interesting links to the early days of popular music. Although today it can denote almost anything that is popular or well-liked, it used to refer specifically to popular songs or singers.
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To understand why, we need to take a deeper look at the origin of the word. It comes from gettonare, a verb meaning to play a song on a jukebox, and this verb in turn derives from the term jukebox a gettoni (coin-operated jukebox). If a singer or song was gettonato, it meant it was regularly played on the jukebox, and therefore popular.
Gettone means token in Italian and the verb gettonare can also describe the action of making a phone call with a coin-operated public telephone.
The feminine form is gettonata whereas the respective plurals are gettonati and gettonate.
- un cantante gettonato = a popular singer
- una canzone gettonata = a popular song
- dei cantanti gettonati = popular singers
- delle canzoni gettonate = popular songs
Il nuovo brano di Ligabue è la canzone più gettonata del momento.
Ligabue’s new single is the most popular song at the moment.
As we mentioned above, you can use gettonato these days in a colloquial way to describe anything considered popular including people (persone), places (posti) and ideas (idee).
Questo è il locale più gettonato di Torino.
This is the most popular nightclub in Turin.
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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.
