A listener notes that among the many Italian-Americans in Rome, New York, the term mappine is commonly used for dish towel. In some some dialects of Italy, particularly the Piedmont and Neapolitan regions, the word mappina means cloth or towel or rag. In the mouths of Italian-Americans, that final syllable was dropped, a linguistic process known as lenition, and handed down through generations, resulting in variable spellings such as mopeen. Mappine also extends metaphorically to someone who is filthy or disreputable or spineless. Another term used by many Italian-Americans is gagootz, from the Italian word for a type of squash, which applies to someone acting goofy. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Mappine Means Dish Towel”
Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. How are you? This is Christopher DeMezo. I’m calling from Rome, New York.
Well, welcome, Christopher. What can we do for you? So, given that I’m from Rome, New York, which is obviously named for Rome, Italy, we have a very large Italian-American population. And so we have a few of these funny words that are not quite Italian, but they’re not quite American, and they’re somewhere in the middle. And one of those words is mopeen. It describe a dishcloth. And so everybody in Rome, you know, they have a mapine drawer. They have, you know, a pile of mapines stacked out on their counters. It’s always been an interesting and fascinating word for me, knowing that there’s no real Italian meaning to it or no real American meaning to it.
Mapine? Can you spell that? We usually go with M-A-P-P-I-N-E. Okay, yeah, that sounds right. It turns out that the word mapina, M-A-P-P-I-N-A, means dish towel or dish cloth or cloth or rag in a couple of different dialects spoken in Italy.
Really?
Yeah, in the Piedmont region and the Neapolitan region for sure, and possibly a couple of others.
Oh, wow.
Well, I guess that would certainly give some claim to the words in our little corner of Rome, New York.
Yeah.
And there’s, of course, the plural pronunciation, but there’s also a thing that has happened to Italian words in the mouths of Italian Americans where a lot of times that final syllable or that final vowel disappears through a process called lenition.
So what might be mapeena becomes mapeen, because the A is just kind of not really fully said.
And then it’s transmitted from generation to generation.
Then you do get weird spellings like M-O-P-E-E-N, which is one that I saw.
Sure, yeah, we certainly have a way of taking the elegance out of our words.
And giving them a little bit of a New York spin, I think.
It’s a continuation of the heritage, at least.
You get lots of points for continuing some of those old words, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, there’s quite a few of these.
Do you say kagouts?
Do you prefer to kind of summer squash?
We say kagouts for somebody that may be acting a little goofy.
Oh, yeah.
So it’s used for zucchini or summer squash, but it does have the other meaning as well.
But I want to go back to mapin for dish towel.
That also has another meaning.
It refers to somebody who is either filthy or disreputable or spineless.
If you think like of the limpness or the filthiness of a dishcloth after it’s been used a while.
And it can also be figuratively applied to a person.
Wow.
How about that?
Love it.
I love it all.
It’s very good.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
And do call us again sometime if something else occurs to you, all right?
Sure.
Thanks for taking the time.
Yeah, sure.
Take care.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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