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ITALIAN WORD OF THE DAY

Italian word of the day: ‘Guasto’

Today's word is one to strike fear into the heart of any traveller in Italy.

Published: 10 January 2019 19:06 CET
Updated: 8 June 2023 12:22 CEST

Italian word of the day: 'Guasto'

Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

It’s one Italian word no one wants to hear muttered over the tannoy of a train station or airport: guasto.

It means ‘fault’, ‘failure’ or ‘breakdown’, and it’s what innumerable delays are routinely blamed upon.

Il volo Roma-Barcellona viene cancellato a causa di un guasto tecnico…
The Rome to Barcelona flight is cancelled because of a technical problem…

It’s not only planes and trains that don’t work. Guasto can be an adjective (‘faulty’) as well as a noun, and it can describe anything from machinery to people.

Il mio televisore è guasto.
My TV is broken.

If you approach a toilet door and find ‘Guasto‘ scrawled there, you’d better find an alternative: it means ‘out of order’.

And if someone warns you that the apple (mela) you’re about to bite into is guasta, put it down: it’s ‘rotten’. Mind you, the same goes for your molars.

Ho un dente guasto.
I’ve got a rotten tooth.

In fact, the word derives from the verb guastare, ‘to spoil, go bad, damage or ruin’.

It’s enough to put anyone in a bad mood. The word for that? You guessed it: guasto. In Italian slang, it’s sometimes used to mean ‘fed up’.

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Italian word of the day: 'Bocciare'

If you open your Italian test paper to see the word bocciato sprawled across the front in big red lettering, you’d be right in assuming it’s not good news.

Bocciare in Italian means to flunk, fail or to hold back.

Se non supero questo esame mi bocceranno.
If I don’t pass this exam they’re going to fail me.

Se continua a saltare le lezioni, verrà bocciata.
If she continues skipping classes, she’s going to fail out.

And bocciatura is the practice of holding a student who’s failed their end-of-year exams back a year.

Marco è stato bocciato mentre Alessia è stata promossa.
Marco was held back while Alessia moved on to the next grade.

Bocciato Sono Stato Bocciato Esame Compito Piangere Triste Tristezza Mr Bean GIF - Failed I Failed Sadness GIFs

Bocciare has other applications, however, outside the classroom. It can also more broadly mean to reject:

Era solo uno dei tanti candidati che sono stati bocciati.
He was just one of a large pool of candidates that were rejected.

And you’ll often see the word appear in headlines about politics, where it usually refers to vetoing a proposal or bill.

I sindacati hanno bocciato la proposta del governo.
Labour unions rejected the government’s proposal.

Il ddl è stato bocciato dalla Camera dei Deputati.
The bill was defeated in the lower house.

The verb has its origins in sport: bocciare originally meant to hit one ball with another in the popular Italian pastime of bocce, or boules.

There’s been some debate as to whether bocciare can be used in the active voice by the person who failed or was rejected, as in the English ‘I failed the exam’, or whether it’s only something that can happen to you (‘I was failed/they failed me’).

L’Accademia della Crusca, Italy’s preeminent linguistic authority, has weighed in on this and determined that it would amount to a semantic ‘absurdity’ in Italian for the victim of a failure to be the author of their own failing (to fail or reject themselves, so to speak).

So while you might hear someone use a phrase like Claudio ha bocciato l’esame in a colloquial context, it’s not technically considered good Italian – at least not for now.

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