Italian Commercial Neologisms

Italian shops are often called something ending in “-eria”. A bookshop is a libreria, from libro which means book. A pizzeria makes and sell pizze (plural of pizza), a gelateria sells gelato, icecream, and so on. An osteria sells hospitality, literally a “hostery” like in “host” 🙂

Since the scheme is very simple, it is very easy to create new words this way, words that are immediately understandable, though missing in most dictionaries.

Here are a few of the ones I have stumbled upon lately.

Yogurteria
A yogurteria probably sells youghurt icecream, since it is also a gelateria. It is also a creperia from the French “crepe”, pancake. Seen in Alghero, Sardinia.

Drinkeria
A drinkeria sells drinks. It is a bar, after all. They also sell sandwiches, as it is also a panineria In Palermo, Sicily.

Pantofoleria
The word pantofole means slippers, so a pantofoleria is probably a shop specialised in slippers. Palermo, Sicily.

Cous-cousseria
Cous-cous is not only eaten in North Africa, it is also considered native to Western Sicily. Hence one should not be surprised to find a cous cousseria in Palermo, Sicily.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post’s permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post’s URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)