Sport and training in Italian

Twenty-fifth on this list is la forza, glossed as strength, and the gloss covers the noun without covering the word an English speaker will hear first. Shouted on its own, forza! is not a remark about anybody’s muscles: it is what a crowd, a coach or a friend says to keep somebody going. Forza ragazzi! is come on, lads; forza Napoli! is what a stadium chants at its own team; and said quietly to a person having a hard week, forza means hold on, you are nearly through. English has no noun that does this. It shouts a verb instead — « come on », « go on », « keep going » — and its nearest noun, « strength », cannot be shouted at anybody at all. The same word then runs through a small family of fixed phrases that have long left the gym: farsi forza is to pull yourself together, per forza means inevitably or against one’s will, and a forza di means by dint of, by doing a thing over and over. Of the lot, learn the shout first: it is the one heard every weekend.