Since the holidays are approaching, and winter along with them, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss the color white. Since we are all always hoping for a white Christmas, snow-covered beautiful landscapes, let’s talk about Italian expressions with the color “white.”
When talking about white and snow, most Italian cannot help but think about the settimana bianca – the “white week.” During winter, many Italians have the habit of taking some days off, usually around December 8th (which is a national holiday in Italy) and go to the mountains to sky. This time, which goes from a few days up to a whole week, is called the “white week,” as the main reason for the trip is indeed the snow.
We also associate the night with the color white, in two very different ways: notte bianca and notte in bianco. Notte bianca – “white night” – refers to a festival that usually takes place in summer, in which all shops, galleries, museums of a town or a city stay open until midnight or even later. It’s kind of like a summer street festival, with stalls, food trucks, and other fun performances and activities. Notte in bianco on the other hand is when you don’t sleep a wink all night either because you couldn’t fall asleep or you stayed up all night taking care of some work or your newborn baby. The first type of “white night” is definitely more fun!
Another interesting expression Italian has with “white” is “white voices” – voce bianca – usually more frequent in the plural voci bianche to indicate a boy soprano, that is young male singers who’s voice hasn’t changed yet. The plural voci biance indicated cori, the choirs they are part of, in fact the expression coro di voci bianche is pretty common. Instead, a weird association with white is mosca bianca – “white fly” – used to indicate something that is incredibily rare, unusual, exceptional like, indeed, a white fly. Bianca or bianco is also usually the way we indicate “blank” as in blank page – in pagina bianca – or fill in the blank spaces – spazi bianchi.
But there are also many idioms, like non distinguere bianco dal nero – not being able to discern black from white – which means to not understand anything, or mettere nero su bianco – to put black on white – where black is the ink and white the blank page, giving it the meaning of “writing something down,” often to make it official. Di punto in bianco – from full stop to white – is something you do suddenly, without any warning, like a surprise, while dare carta bianca – to give white/blank paper – means to give full liberties to someone to do something as they want. But something can also farti diventare i capelli bianchi – give you white hair – meaning to drive you crazy or you may have gotten white hair out of fear – ti sono diventati i capelli bianchi dalla paura.
Well, all it’s left now is to wish you a bianco Natale – a white Christmas – and happy holidays to you all.