entrarci
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Italian
[edit]Verb
[edit]entràrci (pronominal, first-person singular present ci éntro, first-person singular past historic ci entrài, past participle entràto, auxiliary èssere)
- to be able to be contained in; to fit
- questa maglia nella valigia non ci entra
- this shirt in the suitcase it doesn't fit
- (intransitive or transitive)[u 1] to have to do with
Usage notes
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sense 2 is often colloquially rebracketed by merging the c- into the stem and treated as a further sense of the unrelated verb centrare (“to hit in the center; to center”). This, aside from an apostrophe visible only in written language, leads to spoken usage like having centrare instead of entrarci as the infinitive or centrando instead of entrando(ci) as the gerund. The usage of these forms is heavily proscribed, but the conflation of the two verbs is undeniable, as the verb entrarci, even when spelled with the right apostrophes and by using the right infinitive, etc. is now widely used transitively, as in questo non c'entra niente (“this has nothing to do with it”, literally “this has to do with nothing”), which only makes sense if the verb is analised as a further sense of centrare (“to center”), since entrare (“to enter”) is intransitive. The proscribed form also remained fossilised as standard in the Maltese descendant ċċintra.