From Belpaese to carrambata! the words of our collective memory - Lifestyle

Calimero, calm and chalk, Capitan Findus, Capitan Trinchetto, Carmencita, call me Peroni, Giant friend, Gringo, Piedmont holiday group, Merendero, moplen, Negronetto ... each of these expressions reminds those that today's kids would call boomer, that is more or less their parents the time of Carosello, of advertising told as a TV series, a narrative for the purpose of sales curated and beautiful that, evening after evening, hypnotized and reunited in front of the TV screen.

These expressions have become part of a path made up of evocations, one among the many possible of what a is a

. After 18 years Zanichelli came out updated (and smart with app and download) that special dictionary as beautiful as an essay in which between evocative, allusive, metonymic uses (transfer of a term from the concept it strictly refers to to another with which it is in a relationship of mutual dependence) and antonomastic,

.

They are

which are an incredible sign of how

. These words carefully collected by Massimo Castoldi and Ugo Salvi make up a book in which to recognize oneself, a help to share the vitality of the Italian language and its figurative uses and to all an excuse to discover its history and continuous transformations.

Past and present continually meet in our language a cultural expression that is potentially in constant evolution: words with a collective ancient history, which have become rhetorical figures par excellence like Cincinnato, evocative like La Dolce Vita, alluding as a collection of butterflies or a

. Very often there is medium advertising or television broadcasts (think of

from Carramba what a surprise by Raffaella Carrà) or film (The desert of the Tartars for example). There is always a story behind every word, settled, transformed, shaped by time. Sometimes they are signs of a path that has come down to us from afar.

Beautiful is the one that

, the 700 years after his death, reaches us from him to us: words, phrases, expressions also in common and current use with a noble father: here is a part of it: 

(in the

against Pisa of the XXXIII canto of the Inferno: The beautiful country where the yes sounds),

(he renounces to assume an important office or responsibility, with relevant consequences on subsequent events. The expression derives from Dante's verses referring to Pope Celestine V who renounced the pontificate in 1294 'I saw and met the shadow of the one who made for cowardice the great refusal (Inf. III, vv. 59-60) ', 

 (death, in the euphemistic and now stereotyped expression of passing to a better life in the meaning of dying. It was Dante who used it and popularized it with the verses of Canto XXIII of Purgatory, when Dante himself addresses the poet Forese Donati (1250ca-1296) saying: Forese, from that day / in which you changed the world to a better life, / fifty years have not gone up to here (vv. 76- 78)), 

expression of an ironic meaning which means not deluding oneself, not even hoping, or preparing for a punishment. Dante mockingly describes the punishment of Buoso da Duera or Dovara or Dovera, lord of Cremona in the thirteenth century, who allegedly betrayed the imperial troops of Manfredi di Svevia before the historic defeat of Benevento, where Manfredi was killed. Buoso is placed among the traitors in the frozen pond of Cocito (Inf. XXXII, vv. 115-117): "I saw", you can say, "that from Duera / where sinners are cool").

More clear reference are the common expressions for which we must thank

, words of his monologues that have become our daily words as let's arm ourselves and go, break the kidneys and man of the world to give three examples. 

There are also some in the dictionary

, which - Castoldi and Salvi underline - mark and have marked popular language, and which have often been criticized and banned, because they were considered offensive or unsuitable. "We have registered them, because they belong to our linguistic history and must be known, but as such qualified and reasonably limited in use. Often social changes and the evolution of people's sensitivity to relevant issues of civil life overwhelm the solidity of definitions born in different contexts and questioning them ". In fact, especially in recent years our sensitivity has been profoundly transformed and we no longer accept certain words, at least with that original negative power. Among the many

examples

(it was the derogatory term used to indicate a person suffering from Down syndrome that generates a physiognomy with almond eyes, similar to that of the Mongols of Central Asia. Today it is back in use by children who do not know its origin, widespread as a derogatory linguistic stereotype, to indicate an unintelligent person),

(Roman voice, also widespread in the rest of Italy, to indicate with an insulting tone the male homosexual. It seems to derive from the appellation of froce or frosce, properly nostrils, derogatory linguistic stereotype with which the Romans called the Swiss-German papal soldiers, because they were considered good red-nosed and homosexual drinkers). 

From "Abatino" to "Zorro", in the dictionary over 7000 words and expressions that recall episodes, places, events and characters that draw a map of our imagination and our history such as: Milan to drink, "Giuseppi", Blasco, Reuccio, islands included, washed with Perlana.