The Italian word mistero is a noun that means mystery or something that is not easily understood or explained. We know with certainty that it derives from the Latin mysterium, which – surprise, surprise – also means mystery, and the Greek musterion.
In ancient Rome, mysterium (which is a contraction of ministerium ‘ministry’) was used, not to denote mysteries, but rather to refer to religious rites performed by secret orders.
In modern Italian, long gone is the word’s association with religious rites. Instead, it is mostly used to refer to a puzzle that requires solving.
Mistero, being a masculine noun, takes the following definite and indefinite articles:
- il mistero = the mystery
- i misteri = the mysteries
- un mistero = a mystery
- (dei) misteri = (some) mysteries
La scomparsa di Amelia è un vero mistero.
Amelia’s disappearance is a real mystery.
Did you know that…?
Another common word for mystery in Italian, when it is used specifically to denote detective or crime novels, is giallo (literally “yellow”). Why giallo, you might ask? Because in Italy, all books in the Giallo Mondadori series had a yellow cover.
What has been described as the very first giallo is Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, in which the protagonist, C. Auguste Dupin, solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women in Paris.
Mistero is often used for people as well, to describe a person whose actions or motivations are difficult to understand, or whose character is difficult to read.
Guarda, mio fratello è un mistero. Sparisce per settimane, non si fa mai sentire e poi, all’improvviso, bussa alla tua porta così, senza preavviso.
Look, my brother is a mystery. He disappears for weeks, he never calls and then, out of the blue, he knocks on your door just like that, without warning.
Just like mystery in English, mistero has a number of derivatives including:
- misterioso = mysterious
- misteriosamente = mysteriously
- misteriosità = mysteriousness
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.
