A key piece of furniture that occupies the corner of most bedrooms is the guardaroba, the word for a wardrobe in Italian. Derived from the French noun garde-robe, it is the combination of the verb garder (meaning ‘to guard’ or ‘to look after’) and robe (meaning ‘gown’ or ‘suit’).
The word final -a might lead you to believe guardaroba is a feminine noun, but it is actually masculine. What’s more, it is invariable, which means that its form does not change in the plural.
un guardaroba
dei guardaroba
il guardaroba
i guardaroba
Il guardaroba di mio figlio è stracolmo di vestiti che non indosserà mai.
My son’s wardrobe is overflowing with clothes he will never wear.
A popular synonym you will hear Italians use is armadio. The difference is that guardaroba can also refer to a space (a room, or multiple rooms) dedicated to the storage of clothes. Armadio only refers to the piece of furniture where you keep the clothes. There is however the term cabina armadio that translates as walk-in wardrobe.
By extension, guardaroba has come to refer, not just to the space or piece of furniture itself, but also to a person’s entire collection of clothes.
La signora ha un guardaroba molto fornito.
The lady has an extensive wardrobe.
Guardaroba is also the name given to the placewhere coats, umbrellas and bags are deposited in theatres or other public places. In this case, the best translation in English is coatroom or cloakroom.
Interestingly, in old-fashioned Italian, a cloakroom attendant was also called guardaroba (with the plural form being guardarobe for both males and females) but this term has since been substituted by guardarobiere (masculine) and guardarobiera (feminine).
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.
