Forty-one is 'o curtiello, the knife. The dialect breaks the stressed vowel the same way it does at 4 and 47: coltello becomes curtiello.
It is one of the four numbers Serao strung together in 1884 to show how the system worked in practice. A young man is knifed by a woman: «diciassette, la disgrazia — diciotto, il sangue — quarantuno, il coltello — novanta, il popolo». Misfortune, blood, knife, crowd. One incident, four squares, one line on a betting slip.
- 41
- 'O curtiello
- the knife
- Row 41–50 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
The pairing is not explained. The usage is, in detail, by a named journalist in a dated book.
Other things filed on 41
In Neapolitan life
That Serao chain is the most reproduced passage in the whole literature of the smorfia, and it is almost always quoted without its context. She was documenting how completely the lottery had colonised the way her city described events to itself, and the chapter around it is an argument that the habit was ruining people.
41 in the smorfia — frequently asked
Because it closes Serao's 1884 example of a Neapolitan reading a street incident as numbers: misfortune 17, blood 18, knife 41, crowd 90.
Neapolitan breaks the stressed o into ie or uo depending on the word. The same rule gives muorto at 47.