In a world filled with diverse cultures and individuals, it’s all too common for biases and prejudices to arise before we even have a chance to truly understand each other. A person with these negative characteristics can be described as prevenuto in Italian.
The adjective prevenuto is in its masculine form, indicated by its ending in -o. To express the feminine form, we need to replace the -o with an -a. The respective plural forms are prevenuti (masculine) and prevenute (feminine).
- un uomo prevenuto = a prejudiced man
- una donna prevenuta = a prejudiced woman
- degli uomini prevenuti = (some) prejudiced men
- delle donne prevenute = (some) prejudiced women
Giorgio è prevenuto contro gli stranieri.
Giorgio is prejudiced against foreigners.
Prevenuto comes from the verb prevenire, which has a number of meanings including “to beat someone to something” “to prevent” “to warn” or “to cause someone to feel prejudiced against someone”. Today’s adjective was clearly inspired by the final definition.
Interestingly, prevenuto also exists as a noun. In the forensic language of the past, it meant “the accused” or “the defendant”.
Il prevenuto ha perso il controllo della sua autovettura.
The accused lost control of his car.
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.
