Italian expression of the day: ‘Piantare in asso’
This is a fate you’ll want to avoid.
It’s not pleasant, but at some point we’ve all been piantati in asso.
It means to abruptly walk out on someone or abandon them in a situation of difficulty, in other words, to leave someone in the lurch.
Quando gli ho detto che non potevo prestargli i soldi mi ha piantato in asso per tutta risposta. When I told him I couldn’t lend him the money he just took off without another word.
Il nostro collega si è dimesso proprio alla vigilia della scadenza, lasciandoci piantati in asso. Our colleague quit right before the deadline, leaving us high and dry.
‘Piantare’ in Italian means ‘to plant’ but also ‘to ditch/dump’.
Giuseppe mi ha piantata e ora devo andare al matrimonio da sola. Giuseppe dumped me and now I have to go to this wedding by myself.
‘Asso’, however, simply means ‘ace’ ( avere or tenere l’asso nella manica is ‘to have an ace up one’s sleeve’, or hold a hidden advantage).
So where does piantare in asso (hear it pronounced here ) come from?
There’s no clear consensus, according to the custodians of the Italian language at the Accademia della Crusca, but one explanation is that the phrase originates from a Greek legend.
In the myth of Ariadne and Theseus, Ariadne defied her family by helping the Athenian hero Theseus conquer the minotaur and escape from her father’s labyrinth with a ball of thread, only to be abandoned by him on the island of Naxus, or in Italian, Nasso.
In this version of events, the phrase started out as ‘lasciare/piantare in Nasso ’ (you’ll occasionally see it spelt like this today) until the place name gradually mutated into ‘asso’.
Another theory is that the Latin ‘asses’, meaning bronze copper coins, also came to mean the lowest-scoring number in games of dice (and later cards), and was therefore synonymous with bad luck.
This gave rise to now-archaic expressions like cadere dal sei nell’asso (‘to go from good to bad luck’) and giungere all’asso (‘to be reduced to poverty’).
Whatever the etymology, it’s safe to say you want to avoid being abandoned either in Nasso or ‘in asso’.
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