It was in the xfiles episode I just watched as well.
Weird Americans.
Comment on Italian place in South Africa, which means "counterfeit" in Italian (correct me if I'm wrong)
CorrenteAlternata@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Hi! Italian is my mother tongue, and “Fugazzi” is not a word.
There are many ways to say “counterfeit”: the standard word is “contraffatto”, but there are also many colloquial terms such as “tarocco”, “patacca” and more. If you’re kinda racist you can say “cinesata” which means “trash from china”.
According to my brief research Fugazzi is a brand of perfumes, and probably a surname…
According to google, fugazzi is used to mean “counterfeit” in the italian american community, and was popularized by the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
Hope this helps!
TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 4 days ago
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I thought the Z was just a fancy written one, not a double one. According to my search:
fugazi
adjective
Example: the stealing was first noticed when the fugazi bills began popping up in the bank deposits
noun
Example: it’s all a big fugazi. He’s used it as a ruse to sell a lot of stock
My first search came with “counterfeit” as first translation.
CorrenteAlternata@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
What I was trying to say is that that’s not Italian. It’s US English :)
GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 5 days ago
that's baloney!
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Since you said it was possibly a surname, my guess is that someone named Fugazi was a well known counterfeiter for the mob, and the Italian Americans started using it as slang.
CorrenteAlternata@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
For me it makes sense! I also imagine the name could originally be Fugazzi with two z, as that would make more sense in Italian. And then it maybe was anglicised first as Fugazy (as said in Wiktionary) and finally Fugazi!
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
But that’s more of an (american) english word that vaguely looks like it has an italian origin.