A man in the northern Italian province of Turin has been sacked from his job after calling a female colleague a “Milf”. 

“Milf”, which is a popular American acronym meaning “Mother I’d like to F****”, is used to refer to a sexually attractive older woman.

The comment was posted on the man’s personal Facebook profile in a post directed at his firm and colleagues.

While not denying that they had written the offending post, the employee, who has not been named, took the firm to court to get his job back.

However, the Ivrea-based court rejected his appeal, finding the employee to be in violation of articles 81 and 595 of the penal code.

The court said the post, which had been online for several days, was “extremely serious” and “potentially visible to all users of social media”.

Moreover, the post was only removed after an explicit injunction by the firm.

The man must now pay legal costs.

Several Facebook-related cases have hit headlines in recent months.

On Wednesday sixteen prison guards were suspended after posting offensive messages on a Facebook page about a Romanian inmate at a Milan prison who committed suicide.

And in November last year Nestlé Italy said that a disabled staff member, who was initially sacked for publicly criticizing company managers over Facebook, would no longer lose her job.