L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025 www.italoamericano.org 22 L'Italo-Americano D i r a d o ( d e e - rah-doh) is an Italian adver- b i a l l o c u t i o n meaning "sel- dom" or "rarely." It is built on rado, an adjective that means "sparse, not dense," so the locution literally conveys the idea of something occurring at wide intervals. Some dic- tionaries gloss di rado as "raramente, poco spesso," and note the very frequent opposite turn non di rado, w h i c h i n c o n t e x t m e a n s "quite often." Di rado has a neutral regis- ter, and it appears in both careful written Italian and e v e r y d a y s p e e c h , t h o u g h raramente is slightly more common in contemporary usage; for instance, you are m o r e l i k e l y t o h e a r v a d o raramente in palestra ("I sel- dom go to the gym") than vado di rado in palestra, even though they have the same meaning. E t y m o l o g i c a l l y , " r a d o " g o e s b a c k t o L a t i n rā r u s ( " t h i n , s c a t t e r e d , i n f r e - quent"), and the adverbial phrase di rado has been long used in current Italian, often a s a p a r a l l e l t o a v o l t e , which means "sometimes," or other locutions indicating how often you do things. Interestingly, the same root surfaces in verbs like 1 in the 6 (you/voi) use 7 and (before a vowel) 9 believed 10 beer 11 (I) enter 12 (they) sell 15 a, an 16 late, near the end of a period of time 17 echo Using the provided meanings as clues, search for the appropriate Italian word in the grid 1 (plural of) in the; moles 2 he 3 (feminine of) skinny, thin 4 (they) lose 5 letter of the alphabet 8 drawings; (you/tu) draw 9 (you/voi) believe 11 (you/tu) enter 13 aunts 14 use, act of using diradare ("to thin out; to make less frequent"), which, in fact, derives from di rado (le visite di Marco a casa si sono notevolmente diradate; " M a r c o ' s v i s i t s a t h o m e became considerably less fre- quent," but also i suoi capelli si sono diradati tantissimo; "His hair thinned out a lot!"). I n t r a n s l a t i o n , d i r a d o maps cleanly to English "sel- d o m , " " r a r e l y , " o r " n o t often," with the choice driven by tone: "seldom" reads more formal, "rarely" neutral, "not often" more conversational. Placement is typically after the verb or at the end of the clause. In a more literary style, you can place it at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis. Writers should avoid con- fusing di rado with the noun dirado ("thinning"), or with raramente when repeating forms for variety; both are correct, but di rado can feel s l i g h t l y m o r e l i t e r a r y depending on context. Passo di rado da quelle parti I rarely go that way Queste riunioni si tengono di rado These meetings are sel- dom held Non di rado si trovano errori nei documenti Quite often you find errors in the papers LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE Di rado, the word for what you seldom do (Photo: Toxawww/Dreamstime) 1 face 2 car 3 school 4 to turn 5 home 6 river 7 girl 8 Monday 9 hand 10 head 11 boy 12 Tuesday 13 mother 14 man A C R O S S D O W N ITALIAN WORD SEARCH The solution to these word games will be available on the next edition. Games courtesy of Lexis Rex

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