With all the rain we’ve had over the last few weeks wet and dry has become a bit of an obsession! Over the next couple of blogs we’ll at some of the vocabulary that we use to describe these conditions. Let’s begin with asciutto = dry:

 ormai il bucato dev’essere asciutto (the washing should be dry by now)

we also have the verb asciugare = to dry:

asciugati le mani (dry your hands)

here are some other words and expressions that derive from asciutto/asciugare:

per asciugarsi le mani si usa l’asciugamano (you use a towel to dry your hands)

l’asciugatrice (the laundry dryer – noun fem.)

l’asciugacapelli (the hair dryer – noun masc.)

la pastasciutta (literally dry pasta) any pasta dish, such as pasta ai funghi, pasta al pomodoro, etc., except soup with pasta in it, which we call pasta in brodo.

with the meaning of ‘lean’: Giovanni ha un fisico asciutto (Giovanni has a lean physique)

We have a colloquial expression ‘restare a becco asciutto’ which means to not obtain something you were expecting:  pensavamo di  riavere tutti i soldi dall’assicurazione, invece siamo restati a becco asciutto! (we thought we’d get all the money back from the insurance, instead we got nothing!)

 

We also have another word for dry: secco

ti piace la frutta secca? (do you like dried fruit?)

and the verb seccare = to dry: 

le castagne vengono seccate nel seccatoio (the chestnuts are dried out in the chestnut drying barn)

Some other uses of secco/seccare:

soffro di pelle secca (I suffer from dry skin)

è un vino molto secco (it’s a very dry wine)

with the meaning of ‘dead’: quell’albero è secco purtroppo (unfortunately that tree is dead)

with the meaning of ‘to kill’: l’ha fatto secco al primo colpo (he killed it with the first shot)

with the meaning of ‘brusque/offhand/abrupt’: mi ha dato una risposta secca (he gave me a brusque reply)

with the meaning of ‘to bore’ or ‘annoy’: non mi seccare con queste domande (don’t bore me with these questions)

we also use the term seccatore to describe a boring or annoying person.

N.B. secco is considered dryer than asciutto. For example, we generally use asciutto to mean ‘not damp’: oggi il tempo è asciutto (the weather is dry today). Secco, on the other hand, means ‘dried out’, like dried fruit, firewood, and so on. We use the word siccità, which comes from secco, to describe a drought.

Finally we have essiccare = to dry out/desiccate: si mettono i pomodori al sole per farli essiccare (the tomatoes are put out in the sun to desiccate)

In the next blog we’ll look at bagnato = wet.