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ITALIAN WORD OF THE DAY

Italian expression of the day: ‘Ci ha messo una vita’

It won't take you a lifetime to master this simple phrase.

Published: 15 April 2022 16:24 CEST
Updated: 15 February 2023 15:14 CET
Italian expression of the day ci ha messo una vita
Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

From completing a simple bureaucratic task at the comune to waiting for the bus, sometimes it feels like things can take forever in Italy.

Fittingly, there’s a phrase for that: Ci ha messo una vita (chee-ah-MESS-oh-oo-nah-VEE-ta). It translates literally as ‘it took a lifetime’, or as we’d be more likely to say in English, ‘it took forever’. 

L’autobus ci ha messo una vita ad arrivare.
The bus took forever to get here.

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Ci ha messo una vita can mean ‘it took forever’ or ‘it took him/her forever’ – the meaning is understood from context.

Ci ha messo una vita per chiederle di uscire.
It took him forever to ask her out.

Sono appena uscita dalla banca, ci ha messo una vita.
I just got out of the bank, it took forever.

The messo (past participle of mettere) stays the same regardless of the sentence subject – but you can conjugate the avere differently depending on your subject to say ‘it took me/you/them/us forever’.

Ci ho messo una vita a risparmiare per questa vacanza.
It took me forever to save up for this holiday.

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Ci hai messo una vita a fare la doccia.
You took forever in the shower.

Ci hanno messo una vita ad alzarsi.
It took them ages to get up.

You’ll notice that the phrase can be followed by either a or per directly before the verb, and the expression doesn’t just work with una vita – you can switch that out for any time period, from a minute to a week to a year.

Ho fatto una domanda al comune e ci hanno messo un mese a rispondere.
I wrote to the comune and it took them one month to get back to me.

Ci abbiamo messo una settimana per trovare le piastrelle che volevi.
It took us a week to find the tiles you wanted.

You’re not restricted to the past tense: ci mette (along with the slightly more common ci vuole) can mean ‘it takes’ when followed by any time duration, and can also be conjugated in the future tense.

Ha detto che ci mette un’ora per arrivare in centro con l’autobus.
She said it takes an hour to get to the centre by bus.

Ci metterai 5 minuti per riscaldare gli avanzi che ti ho lasciato in frigorifero.
It’ll take you 5 minutes to heat up the leftovers I left in the fridge for you.

Have a go at mastering all the different variations of this phrase – we bet it won’t take you long!

Do you have an Italian word you’d like us to feature? If so, please email us with your suggestion.

Member comments

  1. Living in Italy, alas, is not in my future. However, speaking Italian fluidly is a goal I’m getting ever closer to, which is why I love the Italian Word of the Day. It’s always so useful and usually something that doesn’t crop up in all the other tools I’m using to learn this gorgeous language.

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For members

ITALIAN WORD OF THE DAY

Italian word of the day: ‘Bocciare’

Don't reject this word without at least giving it a try.

Published: 23 May 2024 12:50 CEST
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.

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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.

Do you have an Italian word you’d like us to feature? If so, please email us with your suggestion.

Make sure you don’t miss any of our Italian words and expressions of the day by downloading our new app (available on Apple and Android) and then selecting the Italian Word of the Day in your Notification options via the User button.

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