Italian Vocabulary of the Day: Pollice (thumb/inch)

thumbwhose origins can be traced back to Latin pollen – lĭcisis the word thumb in Italian.

the word "thumb" on a background with two thumbs up and down

because thumb is a masculine noun, it has the following definite and indefinite articles:

thumbs up
thumbs up

an inch
thumb

thumbs up
thumbs up

thumbs up
(some) thumb

This thumb is the outermost number, accompanied by index (index finger), middle (middle finger), ring (ring finger) and little finger (little finger).

I cut my thumb while cooking dinner.

I cut my thumb while preparing dinner.

female hand named with fingers in italian

thumbs up Yes thumbs up in Italian, while not optimistic translate to thumb down or thumb downThese types of gestures can be traced back to the Roman Empire, when crowds used them to determine the fate of defeated gladiators at the end of a battle.

do you know…?

In one of the most famous scenes in the movie “Gladiator,” Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) gives a thumbs up, but the victorious gladiator Maximus (Russell Crowe) refuses to kill the defeated opponent.

However, many historians explain that the thumbs-down gesture meant the opposite: to leave the sword in its scabbard, thereby sparing the life of the slave. Thumbs up means drawing the sword to kill him.according to printed matterdirector Ridley Scott was aware of this, but decided to reverse the meaning to match today’s pop culture, where generally thumbs up is positive and thumbs down is negative.

Other historians consider these gestures to be entirely different. Some say the crowd keeps their thumbs level when they want the gladiator to die, others say that “fist around the thumb” means the gladiator can survive. (resource: Wikipedia).

Close-up on hand with thumbs up — *thumbs up* = **thumbs up**

When I meet my husband, the first thing I notice about him is that he free rider thumb (free rider thumb), which means he can bend it back nearly 90°.

notes: sometimes thumb and enhanced form Thumbnail wrongly used by italians to refer to thumb. The correct term for this body part in Italian is thumb (or say thickly).

because human thumb about one length inchthe word thumb to represent this particular unit of measurement. Although primarily an Anglo-Saxon measurement system, it is also used in Italy, especially to indicate the size of TV screens.

I bought a fifty-inch TV.

I bought a 50 inch TV.

in Italian, thumb Also used figuratively to refer to short distances or small spaces, especially in negative phrases, such as the following line from Moby Dick:

It’s still there, exactly where I left it: it hasn’t moved an inch.

He was still there, just as I had left him: he was motionless.