Bere un bicchiere d’acqua quando fa caldissimo

What does the Italian ending -issimo mean?

In Italian you can turn “very” into one word. Take an adjective, drop its final vowel, and add -issimo: caldo (hot) becomes caldissimo (extremely hot). It’s a quick way to dial something up without putting molto (very) in front. The ending changes to match what you describe — caldissima, caldissimi, caldissime — so a hot day, a hot coffee, and hot peppers each get their own form. You’ll hear it everywhere, from weather to food to praise.

On a sweltering day you might groan, like the speaker here: “Mamma mia, fa caldissimo, fa caldissimo” (wow, it’s boiling hot). The pattern is simple: bello (nice) to bellissimo (gorgeous), buono (good) to buonissimo (delicious), grande (big) to grandissimo (huge). Grammar books call this the “absolute superlative,” but you can just think of it as a built-in “super-.” It comes from the Latin ending -issimus. Match the final letter to the thing: una pizza buonissima, due caffè caldissimi. One small spelling note: words ending in -co or -go usually add an h to keep the hard sound, so ricco (rich) becomes ricchissimo and lungo (long) becomes lunghissimo.