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Of course, this is my AWAD week.
On the word of today - al fresco - I can add that we use it also to mean "in jails". No idea why.
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Emanuela,
Wonderful to have an Italian week. I hope you will find more to comment on.
As for "al fresco" also meaning in jail, maybe it's just a kind of sarcasm?
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I note that emanuela makes it into two words. I have never before seen it as one word.
But my dictionary gives it both ways.
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Din't he run a sidewalk café on Forty-leventh Street down in Vecchio Old Town?
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Dear Faldage: you should spend six month in the durance vile type of al fresco.
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I don't understand what they're talking about, either.
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addict
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I don't understand what they're talking about, either.
Isn't it obvious?
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I searched for "al fresco jail" and got this:
Just an observation from one who's been to Italy, dined in many sidewalk cafes and is an
amateur linguist. It seems to me that "al fresco" might be colloquial Italian for "in jail" the way
Americans use "in the cooler", to express incarceration.
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old hand
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Does anyone know what connection there is between this definition and the type of painting?
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Fresco painting is done with water colors on fresh plaster, meaning plaster newly mixed, unset.
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Fresco is literally fresh. Al fresco = in the fresh (air), fresco = (painted on) fresh (plaster)
Bingley
Bingley
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A cartoon, which I can't find on the web, has an angry housewife confronting a housepainter who's wearing a beret and wielding an artist's brush and who has painted a large mural on the side of her house.
"Al," she's saying, "I said 'fresh coat', not 'fresco'!"
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Al fresco = in the fresh (air)
There's also the French term plein air, which means the painting was done outside in the natural light. I believe plein air translates to "open air"-- correct me if I'm wrong, bel.
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i'm glad you brought this up, rapunzel; i've always avoided using this expression since i don't know the preferred pronunciation. i'd tend toward something along the lines of a single-word 'plenn-AYRE', but i think i may have heard it said as simply "PLAIN air".
which is preferred and/or 'correct'? is it said one way when describing dining, and another when describing the art form?
[non-word rambling]the city where i live hosts a plein air art contest at the beginning of each summer, and it's quite a lovely sight to behold... scores of talented artists dotting the beachscape, creating amazing works of impressionistic art in just a few days. IIRC there's a fairly impressive purse shared by the winners. neat stuff =)[/non-word rambling]
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i'm glad you brought this up, rapunzel; i've always avoided using this expression since i don't know the preferred pronunciation.Boy, am I impressed with the company YOU keep if you can even get to think about using the term in conversation! You oughta try mixing with my acquaintances ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Pooh-Bah
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Hey! 
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How's in goin, Cap? Give my best to SWMBO. Hope yer enjoyin the plein air.
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Memorize this, CK: "Monet opted instead to study at Gleyre's avant-garde salon and
studio, where he established lifelong friendships with Frédéric
Bazille, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. The three began
painting together en plein aire (in the outdoors) in the forest of
Fontainbleau, south of Paris. "
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Well ... since you're all pleinly airing your views ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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May one beg you bestow plenary indulgence, CK?
Yeah, just so long as everyone who wants one also buys one of these here vacuum-sealed plastic-wrapped relic packs of Christ's finger bones, ten to the set. You get one free with every twenty indulgences you buy at 1d each. If you want specially worded indulgences (e.g. "may your ears turn into assholes and shit on your shoulders"), then the price is 1˝d. Take advantage of this free offer for these gen-u-wine ancient relics. They won't last!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Definitely means out in the open air.
'plenn-AYRE', it is Cara. BUT, it does seem a little difficult to pronounce it that way when speaking in English. I imagine that is why people would pronounce it Plain air.
The same type of thing happens with cirque (as in Cirque du Soleil). The CI is supposed to be pronounced like the SI in SIT but it is most often pronounced like the CI in CIRCLE.
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In the days left this week, I'm wondering if Anu will use macaroni and note its use as a generic word (among southern Italians) for pasta, in Yankee Doodle and, in adjectival form, to describe a composition written in Latin and vernacular.
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Perhaps you can enjoy this Italian colloquial name for prison:
gattabuia = dark ( without light) (female) cat .
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I think the example of Today's Word about "condottieres" meaning Pakistanis fighting in Kashmir is not really appropriate. The Pakistanis believe deeply in the cause for which they are fighting. The condottieres typically fought only for pay. Incidentally one of the most successful and most vicious of them was an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood. http://www.telepath.com/hawkwood/hawkwood.htm
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Akin to this week's theme, here are some Italian adages. I know we've done something like this before; sorry if I repeat any.
A closed mouth catches no flies
Trouble rides a fast horse
When ill luck falls asleep, let none wake her
A new broom sweeps clean, but the old brush knows all the corners
Better give a penny then lend twenty
Give neither counsel nor salt till you are asked for it
If the patient dies, the doctor has killed him, but if he gets well, the saints have saved him
and one which is also common in English:
If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me
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Give neither counsel nor salt till you are asked for it
I don't get the salt reference.
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con sel? and you a seller in the market place, I'm shocked! 
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Ah what sadness is this...pouring salt on the wounds of my ignorance Monsieur maverick.
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darn, I coulda said I was shaken! but no, sweet thing, I would never presume to rub other than balm in your wounds [/kiss]
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I coulda said You DID say she's a salt seller...
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That would be bath salts, right, cherie? Wouldn't they be more apt to clean things up? AckshulyŽ(cheque's in the mail, Mav )salacious doesn't have anything to do etimologistically(huh?) with salt, so why is salacious language called "salty" language? Oh, I posted a word post! Calgon take me away!
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"Yankee Doodle went to town
A'riding on a pony
Put a feather in his hat
And called it Macaroni"
It is my understanding that the "Macaroni" referred to in the song was to a group of fancy dressed fops who paraded around London town in the 1770s. The idea of the song was that the Colonists were so stupid they thought a single feather in their hats could entitle them to call themselves members of the "Macaroni" ... Also I understand the song was originally an English song started as a slur on the Colonists (the "Yankee Doddles") but was adopted by the Colonists as a compliment and the slur diffused by their laughing at themselves.
Or am I hopelessly misinformed? Anyone?
PS And what, pray tell, is a Doodle?
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Dear wow: I forget where I saw it, but your analsysis of "Yankee Doodle" seems entirely correct. I don't remember the "Doddle" part, but suspect that "Doodle" just sounded better. Here is a URL to annoy CK: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr19.htmlYou have to scroll down a ways and click on underlined "Yankee Doodle".
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From A Paradise in Madrid" Camilo JoseCela, The Hive
The waste plot that is the morning playground or noisy, quarrelsome boys who throw stones at each other all day long, is, from the time that front doors are locked, a rather grubby Garden of Eden where one cannot dance smoothly to the music of a concealed, almost unnoticed radio set; where one cannot smoke a scented, delightful cigarette as a prelude; where no easy, candid endearments may be whispered in security, in complete security. After lunch time the waste ground is the resort of old people who come there to feed on the sunshine like lizards. But after the hour when the children and the middle aged couples go to bed, to sleep and dream, it is an uninhibited paradise with no room for evasion or subterfuge, where all know what they are after, where they make love nobly, almost harshly, on the soft ground which still retains the lines scratched in by the little girl who spent the morning playing hop-scotch, and the neat, perfectly round holes dug by the boy who greedily used all his spare time to play at marbles.
Ive never heard the terms waste ground or waste plot mean anything other than a trash dump. Is something lost in the translation, or is this not necessarily *fresh air?
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Dear musick: My guess is that "waste" in the passage you posted is an adjective meaning that the area has "been laid waste" by too many people and too little effort to keep turf in good condition.
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In the UK waste ground would commonly refer to what I think you guys in the States would call an empty lot - or similar. The general connotation I would understand is a patch of ground, not neccessarily extensive, which is wild and undeveloped by contrast with the surrounding townscape. It is also virtually axiomatic that such an area makes a *fine imaginative place for youngsters to play...! I think TS Eliot clearly drew on both his USA and UK language experience - never more so than in his most famous poem...
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I agree, Mav, that this is a poor translation. I have no doubt this refers to what we USns call a vacant lot, which is a bare and unused tract of ground in the midst of inhabited tracts which are in use. It is usually a piece of ground which has somehow never been built on whilst its neighbors have been put to use, or in some cases one which did have some improvement (technical term for "building") which has burned down and disappeared or torn down, and never replaced.
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Bill crowed triumphant: Here is a URL to annoy CK: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr19.htmlI'm pretty hard to annoy generally and this url annoys me ever so slightly for only one reason: I can't see why I'm supposed to be annoyed. It was an interesting link. Que pasa, Bill? Wow was, I'm sure, right about macaroni. Macaronis were dandies of the weirdest kind, and the usage of the word in that sense in the "official" version of the song seems to be confirmed by the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" line. I remember reading something about the War of Independence years ago which suggested that it was more of a civil war than a war against a foreign oppressor/aggressor. It had all of the ingredients of a civil war - families divided, scores being paid off, that kind of thing. In some areas, it was suggested, the British were almost incidental to events rather than the main event themselves. I don't really know a hell of a lot about the minutiae of that period. What do you USns think?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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