Becoming Italian Word by Word: Butchering (in) the Italian Language

macellaio, macelleria

butcher shop

The Italian Renaissance had its share of celebrity “top chefs,” but just as acclaimed were the meat men who butchered animals and carved meat at courtly banquets. In Italy meat (carne) still merits a store of its own, the “macellaio” or “macelleria” (butcher shop). The name comes from the verb macellare (to slaughter), but macellata (butcher’s meat) takes on a bewildering number of names and expressions.

The window of a macellaio in Rome (above) keeps it simple, with cuts of veal (vitello) and beef (bovino adulto or adult cow). Carne can also be rossa (red), bianca (white meat, such as chicken, turkey or rabbit), macinata (minced) or stufata (stewed).

Meat is sometimes identified by its source. Carne di manzo, for instance, comes from three-year-old heifers that have not calved or bulls that have not been castrated. Bue refers to a castrated bull that is at least four years old. Rather than the pot calling the kettle black, by the way, in Italian it’s il bue che dice cornuto all’asino (the bull that calls the donkey a cuckold).

A vacca is an adult cow that has calved. Latte di vacca (cow’s milk) comes from a vacca da latte (milk cow). Mucca serves as a general term for cow, and the dread disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy is called mucca pazza (mad cow) in Italy.

Vacca doubles as a coarse insult for a slob, a whore or a woman who is grassa come una vacca (fat as a cow). But it’s perfectly acceptable to exclaim “Porca vacca!” (the equivalent of “Holy cow!”). Federico Fellini gave “vitelloni” (big overgrown calves) a new meaning when he used it as the title for one of his first movies as a derogatory description of aimless young men.

“Sono io in carne ed ossa” (Here I am in flesh and bone), a friend visiting from Italy once announced. Essere in carne (literally to be “in meat”) is a euphemism for being plump). Rimettersi in carne means to put on meat or flesh—in other words, to put some meat on one’s bones.

Someone who undertakes too many projects at the same time “mette troppa carne al fuoco” (puts too much meat on the fire). Carne also is the root of carnale (carnal, bodily) and of carnevale, the festive Italian celebration when Christians once said “addio alla carne” (goodbye to meat) for the forty days of Quaresima (Lent).

My favorite form of Italian beef—bistecca alla fiorentina—comes from Tuscany’s fine Chianina cows. The name, a Florentine waiter once told me, comes from the city’s tradition of serving these tender steaks to the populace on the feast of Saint Lorenzo, the Medici family’s patron. One year English travelers in the throng eagerly cried out for servings of what they called “beef steak.” Italians took up the chant of “Bistecca!” and the English derivative stuck to “la fiorentina.”

For a mouth-watering video of “la bistecca fiorentina,” click below: