Italian words spread to English language

Italian was the last Western European language to develop.

For many centuries, Latin continued to be the language of science and learning in Italy, and since the Italian peninsula was not united politically, it was a land of many spoken dialects, few of which were written.

But due to the writings of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the 14th century, the dialect of Tuscany, the region around Florence, became the predominant form of Italian.

It became influential in humanities, arts and music. Italian words soon spread to other languages, including English. Here are a few samples:

General

Alarm — from all’arme, which was a call to take up arms against an invader

Alert — from allerta, which literally means to be on the ascent

Ballerina —the same word in Italian meaning a dancer

Bankrupt — from two Italian words, banca (bench) and rotta (broken). From the practice of breaking the benches of money lenders or bankers who defaulted.

Bimbo — originally related to bambino (a baby or child) but later came to mean a woman of exaggerated sexual inclinations or features.

Ditto — from Ditto, or Detto, meaning “said” or “repeated”

Fiasco — a word with a dual meaning: a bottle, or a total failure (as it came to mean in English)

Musical

Alto —meaning “high”

Andante — meaning moderately slow and easy

Arpeggio — meaning “harp-like”

Fugue — from fuga, “flee, fly”

Opera — “a work”

Operetta — “little opera”

Segue — meaning “it follows”

Food

Amaretto — diminutive of amaro, “bitter”

Bologna (baloney) — a sausage from Bologna

Broccoli — Plural of broccolo, “cabbage top”

Linguine — plural of linguina, diminutive of lingua, “tongue”

Pepperoni — plural of peperone, augmentative of pepe, pepper, from Latin Piper

Tortellini — plural of tortellino, meaning “little cake”

Zucchini — plural of zucchina, meaning “small gourd”