The story
From Latin meridiare, to keep to the middle of the day: you find a wall or an olive tree and wait the heat out. Montale opened a poem in Ossi di seppia with meriggiare pallido e assorto, and the verb has been mostly literary ever since.
meriggiare
meh-reed-JAH-reh[merid͡ʒˈd͡ʒaːre]
to see out the hottest hours lying in the shade — the siesta, taken outdoors
Closest in English: siesta, nap, napping. None of them covers it.
Watch the word
A real game of this word, in 23 seconds.
How it went in the game
Played by 87 people.
Four in five placed it in Italian straight away; most of the others went for Portuguese.
The most common guess was “picnic”: not close.
Of those who bet on the translation, one in three got it exactly.
The four rounds
Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.
- Which language is it from?Italian
- When does it happen?In the heat of midday
- Where would you hear it?An olive grove in high summer
- What does it mean?To lie up in the shade at midday
More Italian words
All Italian words ›More about the weather
- gluggaveður Icelandic
- uitwaaien Dutch