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  • if your Italian date asks for permission to do scarpetta during a romantic dinner... he's not talking about playing footsie, much less it is a comment about your shoes.

    (Further information on Wikipedia)

    June 9, 2009

  • Very useful! Is this used as a verb, also?

    June 9, 2009

  • We say fare scarpetta (to do scarpetta).

    June 9, 2009

  • I always do scarpetta, if the sauce is tasty. Why should it be considered rude?

    June 9, 2009

  • Oh, don't listen to them. I do that too.

    Can I do scarpetta if I come to Slovenia, then?

    June 9, 2009

  • My mother has a different term for this, but I've only heard it spoken, never spelled out. It sounds like the Italian word for "soup." Must be her dialect. :-)

    June 9, 2009

  • Absolutely, Pro! I just have to figure out how to say this in Slovene.

    June 9, 2009

  • I think wikipedia might have this arsiversy, at least in the parts of the world where I've lived. It was once forbidden by etiquette, but no longer is. Surely it's not really considered rude in Rome?

    June 9, 2009

  • reesetee: zuppetta? puccia?

    June 10, 2009

  • Growing up, for me, it was considered borderline rude to NOT do it, because you were wasting the sauce/oil. Kids were excepted.

    June 10, 2009

  • So I want to know about the word itself (sorry, guys, that's just the way I am). One translation tool tells me that scarpa means "shoe" in Italian. So when I sponge up the leftover sauce with my bread, am I "doing/making the little shoe"?

    June 10, 2009

  • By the way, "arsiversy", Yarb? Is this a synonym for bass-ackward? (Though I would make it arsiverse as an adjective.)

    June 10, 2009

  • See arsy-versy. I picked it up in Rabelais and it's wormed its way into my general usage. Yes, meaning back-to-front or wrong-way-round.

    June 10, 2009

  • rolig: I don't know! The only google search results are not really helpful (all say the same thing without any reference); I will look for better information somewhere else.

    June 10, 2009

  • Thanks, Pro! We're counting on you.

    June 10, 2009

  • the best part of bread-loving culture.

    so often I've looked at the remnants of a delicious Korean stew and the hateful rice I can't soak it up with.

    June 10, 2009

  • Yes rol, scarpa shoe, scarpetta a diminuitive. Italians use fare to do very widely.

    June 10, 2009

  • I poked around the Slovene dictionary and discovered that škarp is there, marked as "usually pl." (i.e. škarpi) and "low vernacular" (code for "people say this at home but don't you dare use it in formal writing"), with the meaning "an old, worn-out shoe" or sometimes (dialectically), just any old shoe.

    But next to it was the word škarpa, which is a perfectly respectable word that means "a wall between two different heights of land, to prevent erosion or landslide"; in other words, a scarp or (more commonly) escarpment, which my English dictionary tells me comes from the Italian word scarpa. I think this solves the mystery. When you're soaking up the sauce with you're bread, what you are doing is making a "little scarp", just like on Chained_Bear's beloved fortresses. So you're not doing scarpetta; you are making (i.e. constructing) a scarpetta.

    Edit: The escarpment has been repaired. Thanks, Bil!

    June 10, 2009

  • Fascinating hypothesis! I will ask for confirmation. In Italian (at least in modern Italian), scarp is either scarpata (sensu geologico) or a very unusual scarpa in building-jargon (synonym of barbican?).

    June 10, 2009

  • *wonders which military history list she can add this to*

    ;)

    June 10, 2009

  • Escarpment, rol.

    Pro ... sensu? Is this the Sardo speaking?

    June 10, 2009

  • Just the Latin.

    June 10, 2009