Italians Qs (Stolen; was Re: You have a word for it?)

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Roger Mills wrote:

> Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>
> >Am 27.01.02, Fabian yscrifef:
> >
> >> > > >Yehy is the masculine counterpart of Miss -- the title for an
> >> > > >unmarried man.
> >
> >> > > We NEEEEEED this word in English.  Honestly.
> >
> >> > I disagree.  I think we need to ditch the distinction between married
> >> > woman and unmarried woman.
> >>
> >> Back about 150 years ago, the common word for this was 'master', and
> >> exactl;y equivalent to 'miss'.
> >
> >Mister is just a weakened form of Master; as Missus is a
> >weakened form of Mistress. I use Miss and Mister regardless.
> >
> >Master was also in fairly common use much more recently. When
> >I was little, older relatives addressed cards and such with
> >"Master". I've never used it for anyone.
>
> Tristan's "150 years ago" prompted me to think, ah yes, when I was a wee
> one.
> Nice to see someone else in the same category.  :-)
I haven't actually taken part in this thread at all until now, so it can't
have been me.

To give this email some more worth, however, I'll ask a couple of
questions.

I'm currently reading _The Leopard_ by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
(transl. by Archibald Colquhoun), which was originally written in Italian.
(And is the first book I've had to study for school that I can say is
actually very good and recommendable, even if I can't quite work out
whether or not it's supposed to have a plot, when I think about it...)

In it, it makes reference to a particular characters' use of 'superlatives
and double consonants'. Does anyone know what the double consonants could
mean?

Also, one of the characters father has a nickname of Peppe 'Mmerde', which
is carefully not translated. Anyone know what it means? (If you want, you
can email that reply privately.)

Thanks,

Tristan

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