Forty-nine is 'o piezzo 'e carne, the piece of meat. Butcher's meat, on a board that spends a lot of time in the kitchen.
The phrase has a second life in the dialect as an insult for someone good-looking and inert, which is the same joke English makes with slab. The lists do not choose between the two, and the dictionary sends both carne cruda and carnagione, complexion, to this square.
- 49
- 'O piezzo 'e carne
- the piece of meat
- Row 41–50 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Undocumented.
Other things filed on 49
In Neapolitan life
Meat is the one luxury the board treats without ceremony: no adjective, no qualifier, just a piece of it. Compare 45, where the wine has to be good before it earns a number.
49 in the smorfia — frequently asked
It can be. In dialect a piezzo 'e carne is a handsome person with nothing behind the face. The board records the literal meat; the idiom rides along.
Nobody knows. The board fusses over its wine and its soup and then files meat as a piece of it, with no adjective at all.