365* New Words a Year [Merriam Webster] (Workman Publishing 4/26/8: paparazzo

paparazzo n : a freelance photographer who aggressively pursues celebrities for the purpose of taking candid photographs

Did You Know: "We can thank Italian for paparazzo and it's plural paparazzi. On the immediate origin of paparazzo, there is complete agreement—it was the surname of one of four aggressive photographers in Federico Fellini's 1959 film La Dolce Vita. Opinions divide, however, on where Fellini got the word. According to Fellini himself, the name was taken from an opera libretto. But Paparazzo was also the name of a hotelkeeper in George Gissing's 1901 travel memoir By the Ionian Sea. Some folks have also noted that in the dialect of Ennio Flaiano, who cowrote the script for La Dolce Vita with Fellini, paparazzo refers to a kind of clam that frequently snaps its shell open and shut, which may have reminded Flaiano of the action of a camera shutter."

This is just one of several Italian words in our language where the plural is considered by alot of Americans to be the singular: panini is another, as is graffiti. Zucchini is the plural of the Italian zucchino. Spaghetti, broccoli (singular broccolo), confetti, linguini (singular linguine) and macaroni are all used in the plural form. About graffiti, the M-W website says : "Graffiti, which also serves as the plural of graffito, is commonly used as a singular mass noun <graffiti…was depressing people who rode the subways — New Yorker> <graffiti comes in various styles — S. K. Oberbeck>. This use is well established although not yet as well established as the mass-noun use of data. Use of graffiti as a singular count noun is still quite rare and is not standard." Rating 10/10 panini.

***Starting with this post—and including any I back-edit—I'll be inserting my own style choices into the quotes from the various calendar pages. To wit, when a word in quotes comes at the end of a sentence, the period will be outside of the quotes. (When that word in within single-quotes and comes at the end of a quoted sentence, the period will be outside the single quote, but inside the end quotation mark.) That may be a moot point, as I will also be dispensing with quotes around individual words (when they are what's being discussed) in favor of italics. To indicate foreign words or words whose existence is conjectured by etymologists, asterisks will surround the word or phrase. Titles of works, regardless of language, will be italicized only.