maravigghia
Sicilian
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Spanish maravilla. Ultimately from Latin mirabilia.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]maravigghia f (plural maravigghi)
- (mainly in bad sense) amazement, astonishment, surprise
- (merely descriptive, non derogatory) weird thing or person; freak of nature
- (derogatory, by extension) dumb, asshole
- Synonyms: babbaleccu, carduni, minchia, minchiuni, sinapuni
- Si' nu maravigghia.
- You are an asshole.
Usage notes
[edit]- The word meravigghia, spread in recent times through commercial advertisement, is a word not deriving from the Sicilian lexicon, but is a calque, previously non-existent, derived from the Italian equivalent meraviglia. The realization of this word, however, does not fit either the Sicilian phonetics (the expected one should be more properly miravigghia) or the semantics of the original word of this lemma which does not have a "positive sense" in every day speech.