A Pranzo is (Not?) a Dinner Party. A Diachronic Analysis of Italian Words for Mealtimes in 19th-20th-Century Italian Fictional Prose and Translations

This chapter provides a diachronic analysis of Italian vocabulary related to mealtimes, with particular attention to the semantic evolution of colazione, pranzo, and cena. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 8.3 million words, comprising Italian fictional prose and translations published between the nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries and divided into four historical periods. By combining lemmatization, normalized frequency analysis, and a qualitative examination of contextual uses, it compares lexical trends in original Italian texts and translated works. The findings show that references to food and meals are generally more frequent in Italian fiction, although they decline in the most recent periods. The analysis of colazione reveals a gradual shift from its historical meaning of “midday meal” to the modern sense of “breakfast.” This change developed at different rates: Italian authors retained the older meaning for longer, while translators alternated between innovative and conservative choices. The study also highlights the growing social importance of cena, the recent spread of aperitivo, and the decline of desinare. Although the dataset is limited, the results suggest that translation, cultural change, and evolving eating habits jointly contributed to the transformation of Italian mealtime vocabulary.