Mi ha appena dato dello sfigato!

Sentence Discussions Italian
#1
English Translation

He just called me loser!

This is a loose translation, right?

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#2

My trusty translator gave exactly the same. Aspettiamo… :thinking:

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#3

All right, this is an interesting topic, but it might be a bit sensitive, because “sfigato” together with a bunch of related terms derive from the (vulgar!) term for “vulva”: “figa” or “fica”.

With time the term was used by extension to indicate a beautiful woman, and now, as an adjective “fico” or “figo” is someone or something cool or beautiful. Nowadays, these terms and the other below are perceived as very colloquial, but not really vulgar.

A “figata” or sometimes “ficata” is a cool thing or action, something related to a cool person.

“Sfigato” as a name or adjective instead indicates someone uncool, a looser as in the example sentence, or someone that has a really bad luck.

“Sfiga” is a name that means bad luck: “La fortuna è cieca ma la sfiga ci vede benissimo!”

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#4

Mille grazie @mike-lima - ah, we’re very broadminded (cool) here on Cloze, great explanation and interesting too :wink:

Bye for now!

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#5

Another thing I’ve learnt from this sentence is dare qualcuno di qualcosa: to call somebody something.

But I’m still wondering about dello here; why not plain di?

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#6

Praps it is more emphatic to say of “the loser” rather than just di sfigato. Doesn’t sfigato require an article here? Any thoughts @morbrorper?

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#7

I don’t know for sure, but it is said this way, with a “preposizione articolata”. It always has a negative connotation, as far as I know. You can think it means "to give the label of ".

Other examples:
“Gli ha dato del ladro”,
“Mi sono dato del cretino per non aver accettato”.

There is another unrelated expression that does not use the article: “Dare di matto” means “to go crazy”, but I can’t think of other expressions without the article.

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#8

Maybe it’s a bit like “something of a loser”? Nah, maybe that’s too soft.

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#9

@morbrorper Ah I like it. I find the dello also important for the rhythm as much as the grammar;-)

Have a goodly day. :wave:

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