Word of the Day: tamarro — tacky / try-hard

Tamarro's etymology is disputed, which is appropriate for a word describing someone whose origins are equally unclear to fashionable society. The most credible theory traces it to the Arabic tamar or tammar, meaning 'date seller' or 'date merchant', which entered Southern Italian dialect through centuries of Mediterranean trade. In Sicilian and Calabrian dialects, tamarro came to mean a rough country person, a peasant. As Italy urbanised in the 20th century, the word migrated North and changed meaning: it stopped meaning 'rural' and started meaning 'aggressively provincial in style' — someone from the periphery trying too hard to look metropolitan. The 1980s and 1990s saw tamarro fully crystallise around specific fashion markers: tracksuits, gold chains, gelled hair, loud music from car windows.

The tamarro is a deeply Italian social category, reflecting the country's intense sensitivity to style and presentation. In a culture where fare bella figura (making a great impression) is a near-universal value, the tamarro commits the greatest possible offence: trying to make bella figura and failing spectacularly. The tamarro aesthetic varies by decade — in the 1990s it was tracksuits and hair gel; in the 2000s it was Ed Hardy shirts and tribal tattoos; today it might be certain kinds of flashy streetwear. The concept also has a geographical flavour: Northern Italians sometimes use tamarro to describe Southerners (unfairly), while Southerners have their own version of the concept. The word is used mockingly but also, increasingly, with nostalgic affection.