Free time and sport

The last entry on this list, all’aperto, is the one an English speaker is most likely to skip over, because English appears to own the phrase already. « Al fresco » has been in the language for two centuries and means in the open air: an al fresco lunch, a table laid al fresco. It is Italian word for word, and it is not what Italian uses. Fresco means cool, and al fresco means in the cool: out of the sun, in a cellar, in the shade of a wall. Kept to that, it is simply a different picture of the same summer evening. The trouble is the idiom built on top of it, which is ordinary colloquial speech: stare al fresco is to be in prison, and mettere qualcuno al fresco is to lock somebody up. So abbiamo mangiato al fresco reports either a shady spot or a night in the cells. The phrase for a terrace, a garden or a square is the one printed here: mangiamo all’aperto, un concerto all’aperto, una piscina all’aperto.