Now that vacation is over, and everyone is getting back to Rome, it’s time for the Word of the Day to get back into daily rotation.
If all of you expats out there are filling out forms for a permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay), like all good legal expats have done/will do, you know what today’s word means. Stampatello is the Italian noun for print letters (as opposed to cursive writing).
One can clearly see the word ‘stampare‘ in stampatello, meaning to print [from a computer]. French, Spanish, German, many languages have the root ‘stamp’ in words relating to printing or publishing. What all these words have in common is the Latin prefix ‘sta,‘ to stand, or to make still. In other words, to print something, is to make the letters stand still. Kinda cool, right?
Example:
‘Devo compilare il modulo in stampatello.’ – I have to fill out the form in print letters.
