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Certainly gives me the chuckles, at a moment when Italy needs to be able to laugh at and with itself.
Le Iene
Following the still unresolved Italian elections in February, a new word has entered the Italian vernacular... governissimo! Splashed across the front pages of most Italian dailies, in reality, this is nothing more than a "grand" coalition government--but leave it to the Italians to add a little sprezzatura to their characterization of the Bel Paese's never-ending political maladies. #governissimo has been trending since February, overtaking super governo after Italians realized the gravity of their situation and that there was really nothing so "super" about their plight, even in the ever-so ironic sense.
Leave it to Beppe Severgnini to explain this term, which turns out to also be quite the grammatical chimera, in that the superlative suffix -issim- is generally added to adjectives to express the highest degree of quality (superlative form); however, in this case it has been applied to the nominal form. Absolute superlatives in the nominal form are a rarity indeed... I think I have a few absolute superlatives I could use to describe Italian politics, although these may not be fit to print.
