Why is lip balm called “burrocacao” in Italian?

Packing her bag, this creator grabs her burrocacao — lip balm. The word is completely literal: burro (butter) + cacao (cocoa) = burrocacao, “cocoa butter,” the actual moisturizing ingredient early lip-care products were made from. Rather than borrowing the English “chapstick,” Italian simply named the product after what it’s made of.

Cocoa butter has been used to soothe lips for well over a century — the American brand ChapStick launched around 1880 — but Italian never adopted a brand name as its everyday word the way English did. Burrocacao stuck instead, and it’s now the generic term regardless of which brand is in your bag.