gaffone/gavone

[Peter Farruggio]

The Italian word is cafone, but is pronounced  ga - VOON in most southern
dialects.  I don't have a dictionary, but the meaning among most users is
much stronger than "fool"  Urban folks use it in much the same way that
"redneck" or "hillbilly" is used in the US.  Kids are told such things as
"They are people who don't bathe, who throw their garbage in the street,
who don't go to the bathroom properly, " etc

Pete Farruggio




At 08:01 AM 9/6/01, you wrote:
>A cartoon by Bill Gallo in the [NY] Daily News of August 15, 2001
>criticizes the ineptitude shown by baseball players when they
>fight.  ". . . since neither guy really knows how to fight, this winds
>up as an ugly wrestling match.  ***  Nobody likes this scene -- This
>silly nonsense of ballplayers makin' gaf-fones [sic] of themselves.
>But, guys, if you must fight, at least learn how to do it right."
>
>My wife has picked up the word that Gallo renders "gaf-fone" from her
>particular friend, a woman from Calabria.  My wife hears it
>as "gavone".  I have checked seveal Italian dictionaries, including the
>Cambridge Italian-English, the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana,
>UTET's dictionary of Italian dialects and Rohlfs' dictionary of
>Calabrian, but have not found it under either gaffone or gavone.
>
>The word means "fool".
>
>Does the fact that Gallo uses the word without explanation mean that it
>has entered at least general New York English, or is he relying on the
>pretty clear context to define it?
>
>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African
>Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.