Word.ws English Dictionary

Italianate

Italianate adjective: italian in style or character.

Adjective

Italianate (comparative more Italianate, superlative most Italianate)

  1. Italian in style or character.
    • "This was a residence designed for living on a grand scale, with gilt chandeliers dangling overhead, rich oil paintings adorning walls, and Italianate marble fireplaces in every room."2001, Death by Darjeeling, Laura Childs, page 15
    • Charlbury, between Oxford and Worcester, is one of the few surviving Italianate stations designed by Brunel. Built in 1853, it is characterised by the broad overhanging hipped roof, providing shelter at front and rear.2020 December 2, Anthony Lambert, “Reimagining Railway Stations”, in Rail, page 42, photo caption
  2. (specifically) Pertaining to a style of Latin pronunciation imitating the modern Roman dialect of Italian, originally popularized outside of Italy by ultramontane Roman Catholics in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
    • Work on how Latin would have sounded in music settings using the vernacular version of pronunciation is now under way and singers are beginning to adopt the appropriate sounds as far as these are known. The differences from Italianate Latin are often striking.1992, Alison Wray, “Authentic pronunciation for Early Music”, in John Paynter et al., editors, Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, volume 2, →ISBN, page 1059
    • The Liber usualis of 1896 was eventually expanded to include pronunciation, and it resulted in the uniform adoption of an Italianate pronunciation of Latin throughout the Roman Catholic church.1996, A. G. Rigg, “Introduction: Latin”, in Timothy J. McGee, editor, Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, →ISBN, page 7

Verb

Italianate (third-person singular simple present Italianates, present participle Italianating, simple past and past participle Italianated)

  1. To Italianize.

Forms of Italianate

Adjective
comparativemore Italianate
superlativemost Italianate
Verb
third-person singular presentItalianates
present participleItalianating
past participleItalianated
pastItalianated

Origin of Italianate

From Italian + -ate (adjective-forming suffix).

From Italian + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Words formed from Italianate

Questions about Italianate

What does Italianate mean?
Italianate means italian in style or character.
What part of speech is Italianate?
Italianate can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near Italianate in the dictionary

  1. Italian wolf
  2. Italian wolves
  3. Italian woodbine
  4. Italiana
  5. Italianas
  6. Italianate
  7. Italianated
  8. Italianately
  9. Italianates
  10. Italianating
  11. Italianation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Italianate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Italianate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/italianate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.