All Treccani’s asking is for a little respect.
The Treccani Institute, a leading Italian publisher of encyclopedias and dictionaries, has chosen rispetto (respect) as the Word of the Year for 2024 — but not because there’s so much of it floating around. According to a statement released by the institute, the choice was based on the word’s social relevance and timeliness, reflecting the changes, concerns and trends of the moment.
Cosa significa? (What does it mean?)
The institute said that the lack of respect in today’s society is “the root of the violence exercised daily against women, minorities, institutions, nature and the animal world.”
Treccani defines the noun rispetto — from the Latin respectus — as a “feeling and attitude of esteem, attention or regard toward a person, institution or culture, which can be expressed with actions or words.”
The word rispetto is uttered millions of times but is often used inappropriately, explained Valeria Della Valle and Giuseppe Patota, co-directors of Vocabolario Treccani, in the statement.
The decision by Trecanni to make it the word of the year was intended to “emphasize, on the one hand, the need for its semantically and civilly correct use, and on the other, its function as an indicator of a value to be shared in civil society: out of respect for of people, institutions, different cultures, the environment and all living beings.”
“This word should be placed at the center of every pedagogical project, starting from early childhood, and then spread to relations between people, in the family and at work, to relations with civil and religious institutions, to politics and the opinions of other people, as well as to international relations,” added Della Valle and Patota.
Since its founding in 1925 by Giovanni Treccani and Giovanni Gentile, the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani has strived to contribute to the lexicon of modern-day Italy, focusing on new terms and phrases that describe the current world and its common language — sometimes to controversial effect. They made waves in 2022, for example, with the decision to list feminine forms of words before masculine ones, placing them in alphabetical order rather than automatically centering the masculine as the “default” form (for example, bella is listed before bello and architetta before architetto).
Treccani’s “Word of the Year” project is part of the #leparolevalgono (“Words Matter”) campaign, aimed at promoting conscious use of the Italian language.
