words the Italians Gave Us

Hello,

Between editing “Words Christmas Gave Us” (my next Wordfoolery book, releasing in 2024) this month, I’ve been working on my downloads for readers. Did you know I have a downloads page with free articles? I’ve created some wonderful ones for the Christmas release (not yet available, sorry) and I’ve started work on “Words People and Places Gave Us” for the same page. It will contain all the eponyms and toponyms I’ve stumbled across since publishing “How to Get Your Name in the Dictionary”, a sequel of sorts. As these downloads go live, I’ll mention it here.

One of those eponyms was the bellini. It’s a word Venice gave us. Sometimes we can forget that Venice was a hugely influential city state, but its influence remains in the English language. We have all of these words thanks to Venice – gondola, regatta, quarantine, zany, bellini, and carpaccio. I’d make a case for casanova too.

The bellini cocktail was invented in the 1930s or 1940s by Giuseppe Cipriani, the founder of Harry’s Bar in Venice. The drink mixes puréed white peaches and the Italian sparkling wine called prosecco, sometimes with a dash of raspberry or cherry juice to enhance the colour. Initially this was a seasonal tipple as white peaches are only in season from midsummer to early autumn, but now the peach purée is more widely available.

Cipriani named the drink the bellini because its unique pink colour reminded him of the toga of a saint in a painting by the 15th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini. Its variants are also eponymous. If you replace the peach with mandarin you get a puccini (Italian composer), a rossini (Italian composer) uses strawberry purée and a tintoretto (Venetian painter) deploys pomegranate juice.

Cipriani was an inventive chap. He also created carpaccio, the raw beef dish, which is named for Vittore Carpaccio, the Venetian painter known for the red and white tones in his work.

Now all I have to do is come up with an excuse to sample a bellini in Venice.

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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Hello,

I finally finished reading the 1213 pages of “Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable” this week and I’m so glad I did. I’ve been at it for more than a year. No, I didn’t only read one book during that time, I also read about 65 other books. I took my time with this one, jotting down notes, grouping words into possible future blog posts, mystery words for my radio slot, and of course ideas and inspirations for future Wordfoolery books.

Gathering candidate words for the blog and for the books is a long job. It takes me at least three years to gather the words before I even consider writing the book – which is why I usually work on word lists for several topics at the same time. I can already tell that this particular dictionary will be a rich source for me. I’ve used it as a reference on blog posts during the year, as you may have noticed.

Anyhow, I made it to the letter Z, my favourite letter in the alphabet, and found zany there. I hope you enjoy its history.

Zany, as you probably know, is defined as “amusingly unconventional and idiosyncratic”. You might describe a friend’s sense of humour or sense of style as being zany. You might enjoy a zany sit-com on the television. It’s a word the Italians gave us. Not the Romans, the Italians, the Venetians to be precise.

Zany entered English in the late 1500s to mean a “comic performer”. It came from French zani, and before that from Italian zanni (a zany or a clown). The word zanni was originally a name, Zanni. In the Venetian dialect of Italian this was their word for Gianni, which is the shortened or pet form of Giovanni (John). The closest equivalent in English would be Jack as the pet form of John.

Zanni was a standard character in the Commedia dell’Arte. I’m not an expert on this particular form of theatre (maybe check out this article instead) but it was popular from the 1500s in Italy and also across Europe. It had an influence on “Punch and Judy” shows and pantomime in the British Isles. It was comedy-focused and used standard characters, improvisation, and masks.

Zanni was played as a clever servant and trickster. He mimicked the other characters and probably dates back to the 1300s. Two facts I loved – apparently the longer the nose on his mask, the more foolish he was and he was always hungry.

The idea of a zany being a foolish person with wild movements and ideas gives us the modern meaning of zany humour and style.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.