Italian words from English
17 Italian words with English in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages.
bar
1. The café is borrowed from English bar, literally “barrier, rail”, from the rail that separated customers from the counter, then the counter itself, and finally the whole establishment. GRADIT…
camera
1. The word for a room is inherited from Latin camera (“vault, vaulted ceiling”), from Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára, “vault; vaulted room”). DELI calls the origin of the Greek word unclear, and…
club
It is borrowed from English club, a word that properly means “cudgel” and is of Germanic origin. DEI compares Old Norse klubba (“club, cudgel”) and dates the English word for an association to the…
college
It is borrowed from English college, which DELI dates to about 1380, from Old French college, from Latin collegium (“body of colleagues, guild”). The Latin word is formed from collega (“colleague”)…
computer
It is borrowed from English computer, from compute (“to calculate”), which came from French computer (“to compute, to count”). The English noun has this sense from 1897. Devoto–Oli traces the verb…
detective
It is borrowed from English detective, recorded in English in 1856 and shortened from the phrase “detective policeman”, a policeman who finds things out. The English adjective is from detect (“to…
dollaro
It is borrowed from English dollar, first recorded in Italian in 1783. The English word, recorded from 1560, is an adaptation of Low German daler, the same coin name as German Taler. The German name…
fan
It is borrowed from English fan, recorded in English from 1879 as a clipping of fanatic. Nocentini takes the English word from French fanatique, which, like Italian fanatico, goes back to Latin…
film
It is borrowed from English film (“membrane; thin coating”), a word of Germanic origin recorded in English from about the year 1000 in the sense “membrane”. English used it for photographic film…
gay
It is borrowed from English gay, in the sense “homosexual” that American English developed by 1935 out of the older meanings “merry” and “licentious”. The English adjective is Old French gai…
media
1. The average is the feminine of medio (“middle, average”) used as a noun, after an earlier phrase with a feminine noun, meaning “average measure”. Wiktionary takes it directly from Latin media…
ok
It is borrowed from English OK, the American English word, recorded in Italian from 1931. Nocentini gives the usual account of the English word: it began as a jocular abbreviation of “all correct”…
sceriffo
1. The sheriff is borrowed from English sheriff, from Old English scīrġerēfa, a compound of scīr (“shire, county”) and ġerēfa (“reeve, magistrate”). DELI dates the English word to about 1034…
sexy
It is borrowed from English sexy, an adjective recorded in English from 1928 and formed from sex. The English noun comes from Old French sexe (“sex”), the source also of Italian sesso.
show
It is borrowed from English show, a noun recorded in English from 1561 in the sense “display, exhibition”, from the verb show (“to show”), of Germanic origin. Italian took it with the sense…
test
It is borrowed from English test, an unadapted loan. The English word comes from Old French test (“pot”), from Latin testum (“earthenware pot, lid”), the same word as Italian testo in the sense of…
video
It is borrowed from English video, which is the Latin verb form videō (“I see”) made into a noun. Bruno Migliorini explained it as a substantivized first person singular of “vidēre”, chosen on the…