Energy and raw materials

La bolletta energetica is the demand from the electricity company, and the noun does one further job that no dictionary sense will predict. Essere in bolletta means to have no money at all — skint, cleaned out, down to the last coin. It is fixed and it is common: sono in bolletta fino al venti, quel mese eravamo tutti in bolletta. Nothing in the sentence need mention electricity, and the speaker is not complaining about a bill; the phrase has left the paper behind. Two things follow for a reader of English. The first is that the construction is frozen: it is in bolletta and never senza bolletta or con la bolletta, and the noun takes no article. The second is that « bill » will not follow. Every idiom English builds on that word points somewhere else — « to foot the bill » is to pay for everyone, « to fit the bill » is to be exactly right, « a clean bill of health » is a certificate — and not one of them is about being poor. For that, English reaches for another image altogether: « broke », « skint », « strapped ».