Yesterday in class we were talking about translation and Joan wrote on the board, "'Ralph è uno Pappagallo' is true if and only if Ralph is a parrot." I giggled and Joan smiled at me. "You like the word 'pappagallo'?" she asked.
"It doesn't mean 'parrot,' does it?" I replied. Over Thanksgiving, my sister had described a boy she fancied and my mother had said he was a pappagallo, a kind of boy she advised us to eschew.
"Yes, it does. What did you think it meant?"
I started to blush. "Kind of a ... a heartbreaker? A player."
"Well, that may be slang, but literally it means parrot." Good to know.
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http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pappagallo
Given the elusive quality of the term, I'm not so sure that it is the best example for the point being illustrated. Unless that was the point being illustrated.
Obscure? Hardly, as herein illustrated: http://www.nelsonfoto.com/v/showthread.php?t=1051
Every time I see my friend Mary Pappagallo, I have to giggle a bit.
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