Common Italian expression
| Literally | To make the little shoe |
| Meaning | You like a dish so much you pick up all the gravy with a piece of bread |
| IPA pronunciation | /ˈfaːre la skarˈpetta/ |
Fare la scarpetta
To mop up your plate with bread
Examples
Quando sono al ristorante, faccio sempre la scarpetta.
When I’m in a restaurant, I always mop up my place with bread.
Fare la scarpetta è maleducazione?
Is mopping up your place with bread rude?
Where does this idiom come from?
There are two different origins for this Italian idiom. For some, a scarpetta refers to a particularly hollow-shaped pasta that helped to mop up any left sauce on a plate. Some others think it comes from scarpa, “shoe,” alluding to a kind of cheap, low-quality shoe. This is because the action can be perceived as rude.
Related lessons
- fare (to do)
- scarpa (shoe)
- definite articles
- descriptive suffixes
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