Word.ws English Dictionary

pentito

UK/pɛnˈtiːtəʊ/

pentito noun: a criminal who cooperates with police or government authorities and testifies against or provides harmful information on fellow criminals; a turncoat or informant, usually a former Mafioso.

Noun

pentito (plural pentiti)

  1. A criminal who cooperates with police or government authorities and testifies against or provides harmful information on fellow criminals; a turncoat or informant, usually a former Mafioso.
    • According to a pentito in the 2004 DDA investigation, 50 percent of the shops in Naples alone are actually run by the Camorra.2007, Roberto Saviano, translated by Virginia Jewiss, Gomorrah, Pan, published 2017, page 50

Forms of pentito

pluralpentiti

Origin of pentito

Borrowed from Italian pentito (“repentant”).

Questions about pentito

What does pentito mean?
Pentito means a criminal who cooperates with police or government authorities and testifies against or provides harmful information on fellow criminals; a turncoat or informant, usually a former Mafioso.
What part of speech is pentito?
Pentito is a noun.
How do you pronounce pentito?
Pentito is pronounced /pɛnˈtiːtəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of pentito?
The plural of pentito is pentiti.

Words near pentito in the dictionary

  1. pentiophenone
  2. Pentir
  3. pentise
  4. pentises
  5. pentiti
  6. pentito
  7. pentitol
  8. pentitols
  9. Pentium
  10. Pentiums
  11. Pentlach

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pentito (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: “pentito.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pentito. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.