Prenotare un tavolo al ristorante in italiano

Where does the Italian word “veranda” come from?

Marco asks for a table in veranda — on the covered terrace — for a more romantic dinner. Veranda looks like a native Italian word, but it isn’t: it traces back to the Portuguese varanda (a railing or balcony), picked up in Hindi as barāndā, then carried back into European languages, including Italian, through British colonial contact with India.

So a word for an outdoor Roman restaurant terrace has passed through Portuguese sailing ships and Anglo-Indian households before landing on an Italian menu. It’s a reminder that even everyday, unremarkable-looking words can have travelled much further than the sentence they’re sitting in.