Cirrus@Austlit

'There is a word I love in Italian for which there is no equivalent in English: dimenticatoio, the place for things you want to forget, or have forgotten already. You might say, for instance, that an old, cherished custom has ended up in the dimenticatoio, a concept you would likely render in English with the phrase ‘has fallen into oblivion’. However, oblivion is not a place. It’s an abstract state of being, or rather of not being. Whereas the linguistic shape of dimenticatoio - formed by the verb dimenticare, ‘to forget’, and the suffix -oio, denoting a place or container for the activity described by the root - evokes something concrete. It could be a room, or a large box. For some reason, I visualise it in my head as a cupboard. (Introduction)