Comments by elisheba

  • ferrarese dialect for 'coppietta' (little pair). a variety of italian bread from ferrara consisting in two crossed thin, spiral-shaped baguettes

    August 22, 2009

  • 'piedibus'... what a bad example of macaronic latin :-S

    March 29, 2009

  • same in italian. sounds like a cross-linguistic onomatopoeia

    December 31, 2008

  • i was wondering whether your name has anything to do with the fonte avellana monastery in italy (in the marche region). which to me is almost synonym with the glades of arcady :)

    December 31, 2008

  • in ancient Rome he was referred to as a tricliniarca, from triclinium, the luxurious Roman dining room

    December 22, 2008

  • early latin version of Christus. this was also one of the names of the Egyptian god Serapis, and can also be translated as 'Messiah'

    December 18, 2008

  • what a fool believes, he sees, it's always better than nothing (at all) :-D

    December 18, 2008

  • i think "buona donna" only sounds derogatory in the euphemistic expression "figlio di buona donna" (literally, "son of a good woman"). otherwise it's unmarked

    November 12, 2008

  • rien poortvliet, wil huygens, "gnomes": a book, a myth!

    October 30, 2008

  • if i get what you mean, shouldn't it be donutivorous, by analogy with omnivorous/carnivorous, etc.?

    October 29, 2008

  • hey bilby! scusami se non mi faccio sentire, ma sto traducendo un libro dall'inglese, si tratta di un lavoro molto importante per me, perciò ho bisogno della massima concentrazione. però a fine novembre... i'll be back on track, be sure ;-)

    October 27, 2008

  • and doesn't it sound heavenly, too? :-)))

    October 13, 2008

  • refers to the sum of all societal influences upon mental health. the term is often used in a context critical of the mental environment in industrialized societies. it is argued that just as industrial societies produce physical toxins and pollutants which harm humans' physical health, they also produce psychological toxins (e.g. television, excessive noise, violent marketing tactics, psychotropic drugs) that cause psychological damage. this poor mental environment may help explain why rates of mental illness are higher in industrial societies than in the developing world. (from wikipedia)

    October 10, 2008

  • this is a very interesting list indeed

    October 10, 2008

  • a form of cultural sabotage inspired by situationism. a contemporary practice aimed at countering the invasion and omnipresence of commercial messages conveyed through the mass media, and their influence on human imagination and on the human mind.

    It consists in deconstructing the texts and images of media industry through the technique of estrangement and detournement. the aim is to free individuals from their role as passive receivers and encourage them to critical consumption and a greater awareness of media language.

    October 10, 2008

  • after all, there is nothing serious about italian politics these days... everything's ridiculous :-D :-((

    September 19, 2008

  • SEPTEMBER 22 IS WORLD CARFREE DAY!

    click on the logo!

    September 19, 2008

  • italian regional (central-southern) word for 'immondizia' (= garbage). the italian media have often used it to refer to the garbage crisis around naples and the campania region. adds a touch of local color to those piles of garbage...

    September 19, 2008

  • erm... it seems i have skipped the list description. only ridiculous words are admitted. but maybe we could extend the lexicon to serious words and expressions as well... wouldn't that be interesting, too?

    September 19, 2008

  • wow, mythical qualities list is the most peopled of my lists now!! thank you, wordies! :-))

    September 19, 2008

  • 'the caste'. an expression coined by italian journalist gian antonio stella, and the title of his book about the privileges and corruption of the italian political class.

    http://tinyurl.com/3t77zh

    September 18, 2008

  • thanks for creating this list, prolagus! we're gonna have lots of laughs (or shed lots of tears...)

    September 18, 2008

  • nice add bilby, thanks! :-) more contributions are welcome!

    September 18, 2008

  • the 'sala delle cariatidi' in milan is a very atmospheric, redolent XVIII century hall of mirrors in the royal palace, you can see some photos of it here (taken by elisheba:-)): http://tinyurl.com/5nh58n

    September 17, 2008

  • great list, jingle!

    September 17, 2008

  • in italian, a cariatide caryatid is also a pejorative noun for an old, backward-looking person (e.g. una vecchia cariatide del regime - a diehard caryatid of the regime), or a mature/old woman.

    September 17, 2008

  • the male counterpart of a caryatid is called telamon, and coincides with the mythological figure of the titan, Atlas

    September 17, 2008

  • that was illuminating, thank you! :-)

    September 15, 2008

  • hi, I'm a fellow translator with a music addiction problem :-))

    September 15, 2008

  • porosity/porousness. what are the differences in usage?

    September 15, 2008

  • it's a nice metaphor. in english the image evokes the idea of weight, burden - in german of water, flooding, swamping...

    September 15, 2008

  • volentieri bilby! fammi sapere quando vieni. e complimenti per il tuo ottimo italiano! mi fa piacere che tu abbia dato un'occhiata al mio flickr, ci sono molte altre foto di bologna... sei anche tu su flickr? :-) a presto

    September 15, 2008

  • http://dizionari.repubblica.it/

    the english bilingual dictionary is a very good resource ;-)

    September 14, 2008

  • thank you! i will add definitions as soon as i can (i have to write them from scratch)

    September 14, 2008

  • italian, spelt with one 'm'

    September 14, 2008

  • coming back to italy soon? that's great news, bilby! have you ever been to bologna? :-)

    September 14, 2008

  • lo 'steig', ahahah :-)) agreed prolagus! i fear this will soon become the standard pronunciation... whether we like it or not, ignorance and mistakes in general are one of the main propulsive forces behind linguistic evolution...

    September 14, 2008

  • still, if you ban weekend and ok, you may as well ban ALL loans from the italian language (!)

    they've been with us for decades now, and are no longer perceived as foreign. so, while i agree that too many english imports - i mean words imported 'as they are', not calques - threaten to 'stunt' the growth of the italian language (but then look at german and the other german languages, the situation is even worse), i think being too strict is outmoded and unrealistic: linguistic trends are uncontrollable, a bit like viral epidemics, there's no use trying to fence them in...

    September 14, 2008

  • Italians vote for ugliest English loan words: the Dante Alighieri Society list

    http://snurl.com/3q4cg

    September 14, 2008

  • i've read the article, which is really interesting. google and antitrust...

    September 13, 2008

  • thanks for this explanation, shevek!

    September 12, 2008

  • and here she is, right on my desktop :-))

    although you can't see it, i assure you she's vibrating in sympathy with my every keyboard stroke :-D

    September 12, 2008

  • "to vibrate in sympathy" (usually referred to musical instruments, e.g. strings).

    p.s. i love my tiny wooden turtle whose head is hypersensitive and oscillates with the slightest vibrations :-)

    September 12, 2008

  • not on bilby... judging from the words on his Italiano list, he would immediately get us :-D

    September 10, 2008

  • alas, cafonaggine is very common in italy, as well as menefreghismo... :-(

    September 10, 2008

  • that's interesting. how long ago was that? were you studying/working in italy? how long did you stay? am i asking too much questions? :-D

    September 10, 2008

  • che carina questa lista! :-)

    September 10, 2008

  • yeah paisà :-D from bologna

    let's get connected! how many of us are there on wordie?

    September 10, 2008

  • is something i really can't DIGEST about my country :@#

    September 10, 2008

  • hmm, not sure. michelangeli came from brescia (lombardia). some dictionaries do not list it as regional. ah, and of course it has to do with devils making a hell of a mess :-D

    September 10, 2008

  • diavolèrio m. noun (regional, northern italy) = fuss, commotion, uproar. not to be confused with diavolerìa (oddity). anecdote: pianist arturo benedetti michelangeli often used this word to criticize a musician (or an orchestra) who played too loud or too fast: "fa(nno) un diavolerio...!"

    September 10, 2008

  • fr. sans collier (chien perdu sans collier)

    it. sciolto (cane sciolto)

    September 7, 2008

  • really interesting one... you've given me a brilliant idea for a neologism based on an anagram... ;-)

    September 4, 2008

  • a thesaurus based on the mind map concept. a mind map is a tool for visualizing complex networks of items or ideas.

    September 4, 2008

  • what do you call the part BETWEEN the nostrils? does it have a name at all...? (ok, i stole this question from peter greenaway's "a zed a two noughts" :-D)

    September 4, 2008

  • thank you for your suggestions reesetee :-) i'm already having great fun in the wordiesphere :-))

    September 4, 2008

  • thank you chained bear! :-)) wordie is a really cool idea, it's lots of fun as well as interesting. i'll check out the other musical lists and add definitions as soon as i have some time

    September 4, 2008

  • name of an organ stop

    September 2, 2008

  • oh, too bad! it's been removed... :-((

    September 2, 2008

  • interesting one, thank you! :-)

    September 2, 2008

  • i particularly like the collocation "to be adamant that"

    September 2, 2008

  • mitteleuropäische is the female form of the adjective - the base form is mitteleuropäisch

    September 2, 2008

  • see also syn. adamantine (poet.) - "unbreakable"

    September 2, 2008

  • adjective referring to the creation of myths - myth-making. poetic here is used in the etymological greek sense (poiesis = creation, making).

    September 1, 2008

  • 1. the miming of scenes from Homer's epics 2. a new figure of speech named after the cartoon character Homer Simpson, denoting an expression that reveals more than the speaker intended. (Wikipedia)

    September 1, 2008

  • also discourse prosody, describes the way in which certain seemingly neutral words can come to carry positive or negative associations through frequently occurring with particular collocations.

    An example given by John Sinclair is the combination set in, which has a negative prosody: rot is a prime example for what is going to set in. Other well-known examples are cause, which is also mostly used in a negative context (accident, catastrophe, etc.), though one can also say that something "caused happiness". (Wikipedia)

    September 1, 2008

  • was actually a medieval keyboard instrument... but definitely a musical dinosaur :-D

    September 1, 2008

  • or lomo - this is for the "flicksters" -: a trademark, as well as a new trend in the revival of analog photography with a touch of patina, where much is left to chance. the lomographer's motto is: "don't think, just shoot".

    LOMO is the acronym for the russian firm Leningradskoe Optiko-Mechani�?eskoe Ob"edinenie, which produced a compact camera called LCA, rediscovered in recent years by the lomographers.

    September 1, 2008

  • italian for "i cry", " i weep"

    September 1, 2008

  • and as a noun, it can mean "woodpecker" or "a frequent or continuous knocking"

    September 1, 2008

  • sometimes they do, but always like synonyms: they can be very similar - or complement each other like synonym and antonym - but they never cover each other completely... and that's the exciting part :-))

    September 1, 2008

  • (of two people) lie close together sideways and front to back with bent knees, so as to fit together like spoons.

    September 1, 2008

  • i've just found out that the verb "to locuplete" was used by donald m. frame in his translation of rabelais's "gargantua and pantagruel" (oxford complete works of françois rabelais) in the sense "to enrich"

    "signor missayre, my genius is not nately apt for what this flagitious nebulon says, to excoriate the cutucle of our gallic vernacule, but viceversally i fervidly operate, and by veles and rames applicate myself to LOCUPLETE it from the latinicome redundance" (p. 151)

    August 3, 2008

  • as a transitive verb it has been used by umberto eco in italian (from the latin verb "locupletare"), meaning more or less to enrich, or to lavish with gifts, or to give abundantly.

    August 3, 2008

  • thank you reesetee! :-)

    August 3, 2008