Eighteen is 'o sanghe, blood. The dialect keeps the hard gh that Italian softens, the same way lungo becomes luongo.
It is a link in the most quoted sequence in the literature. Serao's 1884 example of how the smorfia was used in Naples reads a single street incident as a run of numbers: misfortune at 17, blood at 18, the knife at 41, the crowd at 90. Nobody looked up one word. They read the whole scene.
- 18
- 'O sanghe
- blood
- Row 11–20 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Not explained anywhere, and it hardly needs to be: blood follows misfortune on the board because it follows misfortune in life. Zezza's 1835 list already has sangue here.
Other things filed on 18
In Neapolitan life
Blood is not a neutral image in Naples. The liquefaction of San Gennaro's blood is watched three times a year in the Duomo and reported in the national press, and the city has organised a great deal of its self-image around whether the vial turns liquid.
18 in the smorfia — frequently asked
Zezza's 1835 printed smorfia has blood at 18, and Serao quotes the same number from Naples in 1884. It is one of the more firmly dated squares.
Because the smorfia was read in sequences, not single words. Serao's example runs misfortune, blood, knife as one incident converted into one line.