Ornella Vanoni ricorda Nino Manfredi e Rugantino

What does “cacasotto” mean in Italian?

Cacasotto is the affectionate-rude Italian word for someone easily frightened, built transparently from “cacarsi sotto (dalla paura)” — to soil oneself out of fear. Dictionaries flag it as vulgar and colloquial, yet it lands more as teasing than true offence, like the English “scaredy-cat.” It is one of those words whose meaning you can almost guess once you hear the parts, and it survives happily in Roman speech and affectionate character sketches.

Here Ornella Vanoni piles it onto a fond portrait of actor Nino Manfredi’s Rugantino — a face “un po' stupita, un po' smarrita, un po' bugiarda... e un po' cacassotto.” Rugantino is a classic mask of Roman theatre: a swaggering braggart who is secretly timid, so calling him a bit cacasotto is exactly the point. Standard synonyms include fifone, coniglio, and vigliacco.