Bafangool!

Part of what makes Orange Crate Art exciting for me is the chance to share what I learn and to learn, in turn, from readers. Manicule? Who knew? George and Lesle's comments on that post point to further beautiful curiosities in the language of type: dingbat, pilcrow.

Something I just learned: the meaning of bafangool, via a piece in the New Yorker on Beppe Grillo, a comedian fighting political corruption in Italy. Reading about the word vaffanculo, I realized that here was the word I heard kids saying in Brooklynese Italian forty years or so ago: Bafangool! I never knew what it meant, only that it was "bad."

As you may know or suspect, this post has come to focus on an Italian curse. Click at your own risk:

Beppe's Inferno (New Yorker)
Bafangool (WordReference.com)
Vaffanculo (WordReference.com)
Va Fangul! . . . And Have a Nice Day (Time)

And one more, risk-free:

You Say Prosciutto, I Say Pro-SHOOT (New York Times)