Forty is 'a paposcia, and this is the square where translation goes wrong most often. The standard Italian reference table glosses it la noia, boredom. Neapolitan lexicography gives paposcia as a hernia — specifically a scrotal hernia, and by extension a slow, dragging nuisance of a person.
Both senses are live in the dialect and the second explains the first: the tedious man is called a hernia. English lists that print 'boredom' are repeating the Italian column without checking the Neapolitan one.
- 40
- 'A paposcia
- the tedium
- Row 31–40 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Unrecorded for the number, contested for the word. The honest version of this entry is that the figure is a Neapolitan noun that means two things at once and the board never chose between them.
Other things filed on 40
In Neapolitan life
Forty is one of a handful of squares where you can watch a translation chain degrade in public: Neapolitan into Italian into English, one hedge dropped at each step, until a hernia has become boredom and nobody remembers why.
40 in the smorfia — frequently asked
The Neapolitan word means a hernia and, figuratively, a tiresome person. Italian reference tables print la noia, boredom, which is the figurative sense with the origin filed off.
Both, with the note attached. Flattening it to one is how the error spread in the first place.