# Italy

Pronunciation: say "IT-uh-lee" /ˈɪtəli/

## Proper noun

1. A country in Southern Europe, officially the Italian Republic, with Rome as its capital and largest city.
   - Simple: A country in southern Europe. Its capital and largest city is Rome.
   - _Italy shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia._
   - _The government of Italy moved quickly to support its struggling small businesses._
2. The boot-shaped peninsula extending from Southern Europe into the Mediterranean Sea, also known as the Apennine Peninsula.
   - Simple: The boot-shaped strip of land in southern Europe that reaches into the Mediterranean Sea.
   - _Geographers note that Italy, as a peninsula, also takes in San Marino and Vatican City, which are separate countries._
   - _The narrow shape of Italy means no place lies far from the coast._

## Origin

Modern English inherited the name from Old English Italia, which was borrowed from Latin Italia. The Latin goes back to Ancient Greek Ῑ̓ταλίᾱ (Ītalíā), possibly a borrowing of Oscan víteliú. The usual explanation treats the Oscan form and Latin vitulus ("calf") as words with a shared ancestor, giving the name the sense "land of young bulls." Under that explanation, its earliest source is Proto-Indo-European *wet- ("year"). Some ancient Greek writers offered a different account: the name honored a king called Italus or Italos.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/italy (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).