Talk:tizzone

RFV discussion: June 2019–July 2021

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tizzone

Rfv-sense "(normally considered offensive, often considered vulgar, ethnic slur) A dark-skinned person, especially a person of, or primarily of, black African descent", removed by an IP as "I am italian and I have never once heard the word "tizzone" used in that way. There's no trace of it anywhere on the internet that I could find of, and the italian page doesn't mention it either". — surjection ⟨?⟩ 10:18, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

• Not in my paper dictionaries. Delete SemperBlotto (talk) 09:04, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

  That's not how this works. Have you even considered that maybe your paper dictionaries don't cover racist slurs? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:57, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

  Yeah. The arguments become stranger and stranger. It’s one of the most valuable parts of Wiktionary that we have words that fall under the radar, that aren’t covered and aren’t known by those people who else curate dictionaries. If you haven’t heard certain words, it also comes from a state of privilege. “I am Italian”, “I am German” ends up to be like “I have been brought up in the polite society”.

  That being said, if one listens to Italian rap music oftener one will probably stumble upon this word, as Metaknowledge’s quote has shown. Fay Freak (talk) 16:16, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

  Indeed, this is RFV driven by WT:ATTEST, and for Italian, paper dictionaries do not even count toward attestation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

  @Fay Freak: I know this is real, at least in Sicilian (as used in the US), but I don't know how to search rap lyrics or sift through all the uses of the literal meaning, so I think it's up to you to save this one. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:16, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

  @Metaknowledge Yeah but I have never learned Italian, let alone listened to raps in it, i.e. I am no active user of it yet, so I don’t know to search certain words or constructions to find certain things. (You might also create a Sicilian entry with a quote which will have a similar value.) Where are the Italians anyhow? None on Wiktionary apparently? (Oh, the last one was Angelucci, you know what happened. No Italians in the recent changes to Italian lemmas.) Fay Freak (talk) 11:54, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

  @GianWiki is a frequent contributor; maybe he can be of help. Canonicalization (talk) 09:52, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, I have to say that – while I can see the word being used in such a sense – I've never heard (or read) it used in a similar sense. -- GianWiki (talk) 13:35, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

  Adding my anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth: My Sicilian grandmother used this term as an ethnic slur against Black people all the time. She was a first-generation American who settled in the Midwest. — This unsigned comment was added by 2601:601:9980:a580:687d:8509:839a:d067 (talk) at 15:43, 7 June 2021‎ (UTC).

(For the benefit of a certain user, TW for mentions on the N-word.)

• 2006, David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White, page 113 has a mention (but not a use), curiously as a Northern (rather than only a Southern) Italian word: "The word [tutsún, a slur for a black person], as Andrea di Tommaso wrote, came from "tizzone—a borning log or piece of wood which is black from being charred." Northerners in Italy, she continued, "sometimes refer to southerners as tizzoni (or Marrocchini—that is, Moroccans). The slur tutsún is "vicious," far more negative than melanzana, the racial slur derived from the Italian word for eggplant, which was also used as an imported immigrant term for African Americans." (Roediger mentions that this was part of Northern Italians considering Southern Italians to be African.)
• 2018, Katherine Da Cunha Lewin, Kiron Ward, Don DeLillo: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, page 103: also mentions tizzone and says Italian Americans render it (in English) as tizzoon, tizzun, likewise a slur that "expresses the speaker's hatred, contempt, and fear of a black other".
  • In turn, 2014, Maria Lauret, Wanderwords: Language Migration in American Literature, page 47, has a quote from DeLillo's works of that English word: "There was always the neighborhood and who was leaving and who was moving in, showing up on the fringes. Tizzoons. A word Albert wishes they wouldn't use. A southern dialect word, a corruption, a slur, an invective, from tizzo, he assumed, a firebrand or smoldering coal, and broadened to human dimensions in tizzone d'inferno, scoundrel, villain." (Later, Lauret mentions how DeLillo has Albert compare and contrast the word with nigger, confirming the semantics.)
• I can also find some citations of tizzun in italics in English texts:
  • 2018, William Boyle, Gravesend: "'Should've gone to Ford, Lafayette. But then you gotta deal with an army of tizzuns.'"
  • 1999, Nick Tosches, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, page 76 (several other books by this author also use this word): "They followed the music, even to the Ionic Club and other tizzun joints, where few white boys ventured. 'We used to hit 'em.' Costanzo said. 'They used to have nigger singers in 'em.'"

I can't find any uses of the Italian word in books, though, searching together with other words (slurs or neutral terms) for "black" or "African". - -sche (discuss) 20:47, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed for now: Based on the books above, it seems it's real (in some spelling) but it just doesn't make it into use in enough Italian books. - -sche (discuss) 13:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)