Over 1000 new words and new meanings have entered the famous vocabulary of the Italian language, published by Zanichelli: Italy changes and the language adapts, tracing an identikit of our country.
It's hardly reassuring if a new syndrome is assailing Italians: aporophobia, meaning "fear and repulsion toward the poor and poverty in general." This is how the Zingarelli newspaper, which has adopted this neologism in its new edition, released in 2026, reports it . These terms reflect society, such as: amichettismo, in journalistic parlance, "the tendency to favor friends and supporters in the granting of positions or appointments, often at the expense of merit." The exact opposite of hombre vertical, meaning "a morally inflexible man who neither bends to compromise nor yields to blackmail."
Gaslighting, on the other hand, is the "psychological manipulation aimed at making a person doubt their own perceptions, memories, or mental faculties, with the aim of exercising total control over them." The word derives from the title (Gas Light) of a play by the English writer P. Hamilton (1904-62), in which a husband tries to convince his wife that she has gone mad.
Italian is changing, just as places are changing due to the tendency to overtourism: "Modifying the urban and social fabric or the environmental structure of a location in order to attract tourists." Transforming it into a "tourist factory."
Perhaps this is why retromania is spreading: “An attitude of nostalgia and passionate interest in the past or what belongs to the past”, with the consequent development of retrogaming , “the sector and practice of video games from the past, through original devices or emulators”.
The dictionary, among its 145,000 entries and over 380,000 meanings, includes homosocial: "A relationship between people of the same sex without romantic or sexual implications." A term similar to bromance : "A relationship of deep friendship or strong understanding between men, without sentimental or sexual implications."
There is also space in the dictionary for the Roman dialect friccicarello , a synonym for “exciting; fizzy”.
An evocative term is "bi-zone," with a dual meaning: "Characterized by two areas or parts, such as a bi-zone hob. Or a bi-zone air conditioner, which sets two different temperatures in two different areas of a room." But it also recalls a historical fact: "In Germany, between 1947 and 1949, the British and American sectors merged into a single occupation zone."
From the world of sport come: the lob (in football, spoon) and breccare, in tennis jargon, "to make a break, beat the opponent by taking his serve".
The expression “Ferrari red” is one of the examples of the use of the word “red” to indicate “the bright red colour characteristic of Ferrari racing cars”.
As for "food" words, they include a cicchetto— "in Veneto, a snack (e.g., meatball, cod, salami, hard-boiled egg, etc.) served with a glass of wine in traditional bacari"—in a cicchetteria, "a place, typically Venetian in origin, where you can enjoy snacks accompanied by wine or other alcoholic beverages." These words were also incorporated into the Italian language, along with busiata , a type of spiral-shaped pasta made from durum wheat semolina, typical of western Sicily.
(Unioneonline/D)