If you’ve been following the Euros on Italian TV, there’s a good chance you’re already familiar with the term campo da calcio, or football pitch (soccer field in American English). 

And if you’re a tennis fan, you may have heard Italian commentators mention a Campo Centrale (or Centre Court) while analysing Wimbledon matches in recent days.

Quite conveniently, campo (hear it pronounced here) is a bit of a catch-all term for surfaces used as playing areas. Here are some other examples:

Campo da golf – Golf course

Campo da basket/pallacanestro – Basketball court 

Campo da baseball – Baseball field

Campo da pallavolo – Volleyball court

But campo is also used to refer to any type of field, whether that be used for farming purposes – for instance, a campo di grano (wheat field) or campo di patate (potato field) – or simply found in nature, as in the case of a campo di fiori (flower field). 

La mia casa sta li’ giu’, dietro quel campo di tulipani.

My house is down there, behind that tulip field.

Campo is also frequently used in relation to military efforts and wars. For instance, you may have already come across campo di battaglia (battlefield) or campo di addestramento (training ground) in Italian news reports.

And a number of popular Italian phrases derive from the military usage of the word, including scendere in campo, which literally means ‘to enter the field’ but is used figuratively to say you’re joining a race, battle or contest.

Finally, if you live or have spent some time in the country, you may have overheard an Italian saying something along the lines:

Scusa. Ti devo richiamare. Non ho campo.

I’m sorry. I’ll have to call you back. I have no ‘field’. 

But what does ‘having no field’ (non avere campo) mean?

As you may have already guessed, campo is often used as a synonym for segnale (signal). 

So, if someone’s saying that there’s no campo or they have no campo, it means they have no phone reception and can’t make or receive any calls.

As a final note: besides being a noun, campo is also the first-person singular of the present tense of the verb campare, which is often translated into English as ‘to get by’.

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