Dictionary

Sicilianism en · NOUN

Etymology

From Sicilian + -ism.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The ensemble of customs, mentality and attitudes traditionally attributed to Sicilians.
   • 2 Isle-solitude, island and solitude, is a much wider concept than Sicilianism, a subjective condition resulting from the Sicilian mental condition. The Sciascian island and the ‘isle-solitude’ that follows from it, considered both with its good and bad connotations (as a port and a refuge), in Sciascia becomes an ideology. See Sciascia, ‘Sicilia e siciltudine’^([sic – meaning sicilitudine]) (Sicily and Sicilianism), La corda pazza (The Crazy Rope), in Opere 1956–1971, pp. 961-8 (p. 963). 2011, Ubaldo Riccobono, “‘Isle-solitudes’ and European Archaeologies in Leonardo Sciascia”, in Rossella M. Riccobono, editor, The Poetics of the Margins, Peter Lang, footnote, page 17:
   • Leonardo Sciascia, for example, views the motif of the dissolution of individual identity as an aspect of Pirandello's Sicilianism rather than as a reflection of the vaster Western crisis of identity. 1997, Fiora A. Bassanese, Understanding Luigi Pirandello, University of South Carolina Press, page 158:
2. (countable, uncountable) A word or phrase identified as being Sicilian (language or Italian dialect), as written in Sicily or by a Sicilian, or as expressive of Sicilian mentality or attitudes.
   • 1900, J. Rendel Harris, Further Researches into the History of the Ferrar-Group, C. J. Clay and Sons, Cambridge University Press, page 76, In proving or testing for Sicilianism or Ferrarism amongst the MSS. tabulated above, we must be to a large extent dependent upon fresh examinations and further collations. It is, however, interesting to note that in the case of some of the MSS. referred to, including the less accessible of them, the Ferrarism, or the Sicilianism, can be clearly made out.
   • 1994, Frede Jensen (editor and translator), Tuscan Poetry of the Duecento: An Anthology, footnote, page 308, 12. dia: is Provençal or a Sicilianism: ogni dia (Notaio, v. 6: Cont I 61) 'every day'.
3. (countable, uncountable) Sicilian nationalism; a political movement within Sicily, and to some extent in the Sicilian diaspora, which seeks greater autonomy or even full independence for Sicily from Italy and promotes Sicilian identity in terms of culture, history and language; also used historically.
   • The exception was western Sicily where the ‘Sicilianism’, the desire for a Sicilian statehood, more or less independent, had never subsided. 2015, Marcello Caroti, Garibaldi the first fascist, Youcanprint, page 69:
   • 2009 [Pearson Education Ltd], Martin Clark, The Italian Risorgimento, 2nd Edition, 2013, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 23, ‘Sicilianism’ was conservative and aristocratic, but it was a real separatist threat to the weak and remote Bourbon government in Naples.

Forms

Relateds

Sicilianity

Translations (3)

it sicilianismo (word or phrase of Sicilian origin) · it sicilitudine (set of customs, mentality and attitudes attributed to Sicilians) · it sicilianismo (Sicilian nationalism)