They make a fuss the neologisms (literally recent words) entered, between the serious and the facetious, in the book of the year Treccani 2025, published by the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia: from “pro-pal” to “maranza”; from “kiss cam” to “keybox”; from “breaking” eyes, to “unplayable”.
«To be fair I have to say», he explains Valeria Dlla Valle, director of the Treccani Dictionary“That these are not terms that have entered dictionaries, not even the Treccani 100 aimed at adolescents, contemplates them, for the moment: we are talking about words that have entered the public narrative, arrived in the newspapers, and which have been chosen by an editorial team: this partly explains the criterion which is journalistic, rather than strictly linguistic».
Jannik Sinner during the 2025 ATP finals in Turin
(REUTERS)
THE SCANDAL? A MISUNDERSTANDING
There are those who are scandalized, Valeria Della Valle smiles: «I think that the scandal, as often happens with linguistic facts, depends on a misunderstanding: it is thought that recognizing neologisms and talking about them means “approving” them, “clearing them”, in reality it is simply a matter of acknowledging that, like it or not, in some way they exist and represent aspects of society: it must also be said that neologisms, i.e. new words, are labile, which can appear and disappear in a short time. They reflect phenomena: sometimes they obey a need to name something that wasn’t there before, other times they are simply ephemeral fashions. It is important to record them because they are a social and linguistic testimony. But for them to enter the dictionaries they need to consolidate and that doesn’t necessarily happen.”
If “maranza”, indicating young people with an arrogant attitude and a certain showy way of showing off, is familiar to those who frequent the news on youth violence, To those who practice tennis commentary, credit or fault Jannik Sinner, technically unapproachable by most opponents, has become familiar with “unplayable”, to say that one cannot play effectively against him: «It is a calque from the English “unplayble”let us remember that sports reporting, often historically frequented by writers, has been a mine of created words”. Gianni Brera’s writing was a hotbed of neologisms that passed into common language: they are his to say “midfielder” and “scorer”: «He opened a path that other sports journalists have tried to follow, with mixed success. Many neologisms are authorial, among those cited in the book of the year is the case of “tornanza”, meaning the choice of returning to a small center of origin to make the most of the experience gained elsewhere.
«These are paths that are interesting for linguists to observe, to understand which are the most productive mechanisms of the Italian language, how new words are formed, with which prefixes, with which suffixes, to understand how many words actually follow English expressions».
One wonders how long it takes to understand whether a neologism will remain or whether it will be a meteor: «It’s not so much a temporal fact: a neologism remains when the community of speakers adopts it and makes it their own, making it common use: this is the case of “apericena”, intended as something halfway between an aperitif and a dinner: how many of us found it indigestible when hearing it for the first times? But it established itself despite us and is now in all the dictionaries.”
THE “BREAKING” EYES, BETWEEN TRADITION AND WEB JARGON
Among the choices that cause the most discussion are the “splitting eyes” patented by Raoul Bova, a strategic move to divert attention from gossip. Still in the field of gossip, with all due respect to privacy, the “kiss cam” was also chosen, the heart-shaped camera that frames and shows on the big screen the effusions exchanged by couples in the stands of sports and concerts, with the collateral effect of ferreting out some high-ranking betrayal: «The verb to split”, explains Della Valle, “also has the sense of “to strike” for beauty, for grace, and not from now, “to split” in this sense is an ancient word, then the media attention that Bova’s private affairs, which have become public knowledge against him, have attracted will certainly have acted in making it known”. Could this have been influenced by your use of “breaking” the jargon of the Internet and social media to say that a piece of content is successful? «Exactly, splitting eyes are eyes that are implicitly striking for their beauty, for their brightness».
Let’s play a prediction game: which of these neologisms could become established? «Probably few: Pro-Pal, a functional abbreviation for spaces in newspaper headlines and websites, will remain at least as long as the mobilization and deployment that intends to draw attention to the Palestinian cause continuesalso because it has the advantage of an immediate brevity that is easily remembered. The other word that I believe will be part of us for a long time is “keybox”, technically a loan of necessity, imported with the object it indicates: the key box of apartments rented as bed & breakfasts for short periods. Since the phenomenon will last – and I unfortunately have to say, due to the problems it creates for historic centers – the word will remain among us, in English, because that is how it arrived”. And why tourism needs English as a lingua franca.
