L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 20 L'Italo-Americano A b o y a t t h e k i t c h e n t a b l e w i t h a b o o k open in front of him and a fork he is not using is, in Italian, svogliato (svo-llah-toh). T h e w o r d c o m e s a p a r t neatly in the hand: voglia, the wish or the appetite to do a thing, with the prefix s- stuck on the front, which in Italian commonly reverses the sense of what follows. A svogliato is a person with the voglia taken out, going through the motions of an activity he has stopped want- ing to do. Voglia by itself is one of the most useful words an English speaker can pick up, since Italians reach for it constantly in a construction English manages only clum- sily. Non ho voglia means "I don't feel like it," and it will e x c u s e a n y t h i n g f r o m a phone call to a wedding. The same noun carries a second s e n s e w i t h n o t h i n g t o d o with willpower: a voglia is also a birthmark, so called because people once held that the red mark on a baby's skin was the print of a crav- 1 uncle 6 (feminine of) broken, fragment- ed 7 I 9 narrow 10 under; below 11 (I) enter 12 (he/she) walks 15 and (before a vowel) 16 cards; maps 17 he Using the provided meanings as clues, search for the appropriate Italian word in the grid 1 aunt 2 gold 3 (has) been 4 cave 5 to help 8 question 9 stomach 11 (he/she) enters 13 of the 14 six i n g i t s m o t h e r h a d w h i l e pregnant and never satisfied. B a c k t o s v o g l i a t o , i t i s interesting to note how it breeds: there is an adverb, svogliatamente, for doing a job with no interest in it, an abstract noun, svogliatezza, a n d a r u n o f d i m i n u t i v e s (svogliatello, svogliatino, svogliatuccio) that soften it into something nearly affec- tionate, with svogliataccio h e l d i n r e s e r v e f o r w h e n affection has run out. The dictionaries file it among the synonyms of pigro, lazy, and draw no firm line between them, though the two roots point different ways: pigro descends from a Latin word for slow and describes the b o d y , w h i l e s v o g l i a t o d e s c r i b e s t h e m i s s i n g appetite. A pigro will not get up, while a svogliato has got up and cannot think why he bothered. Oggi sono svogliato, non ho voglia di fare niente "I'm listless today; I don't feel like doing anything." È un ragazzo intelligente, ma a scuola è svogliato. "He's a bright boy, but at school he can't be bothered." Svogliato: when the voglia runs out © Auremar | Dreamstime.com 1 man 2 book 3 to hold 4 to talk 5 Monday 6 home 7 to drink 8 river 9 mother 10 car 11 woman 12 three 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 LA VITA ITALIANA TRADIZIONI STORIA CULTURA

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