Scuro
ADJECTIVE/NOUN
Meaning and English translation 🔖
1. Dark, poorly lit
🇬🇧 Poorly lit or lacking light, dark.
🇮🇹 Poco o male illuminato, privo di luce, buio.
2. Of dark color
🇬🇧 Of color with deep tones, tending toward black.
🇮🇹 Di colore che ha tonalità cupa, tendente al nero.
| Masculine ♂️ | Feminine ♀️ | |
|---|---|---|
| Singular | Scuro | Scura |
| Plural | Scuri | Scure |
Example sentences 💬
Le pareti scure rendono questa sala troppo cupa.
The dark walls make this room too gloomy.
Sugli abiti scuri le macchie si vedono meno.
Stains are harder to see on dark clothes.
Il cielo si è fatto scuro all'improvviso, sta per piovere.
The sky suddenly turned dark, it's about to rain.
Gli scuri di questo dipinto sono troppo intensi.
The dark tones of this painting are too intense.
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Idioms with scuro 🇮🇹
Essere scuro in volto / Avere la faccia scura
→ To have a grim expression / To look serious
Quando è entrato nella stanza, il professore era scuro in volto e abbiamo capito subito che l'esame era andato male.
When the professor entered the room, he had a grim expression and we immediately understood that the exam had gone poorly.
Un futuro scuro
→ A bleak future
Con questa crisi economica, molti giovani vedono un futuro scuro davanti a loro.
With this economic crisis, many young people see a bleak future ahead of them.
Tempi scuri
→ Dark times
Sono stati tempi scuri per la nostra famiglia, ma ora le cose vanno meglio.
Those were dark times for our family, but things are better now.
Vestire di scuro
→ To wear dark colors
Gli italiani tendono a vestire di scuro in ufficio.
Italians tend to dress in dark colors at the office
Chiari e scuri
→ Lights and shadows (in painting/drawing)
Un buon pittore sa giocare con i chiari e scuri per creare profondità.
A good painter knows how to play with lights and shadows to create depth.
Birra scura
→ Dark beer
In Irlanda ho assaggiato una birra scura davvero deliziosa.
In Ireland, I tasted a really delicious dark beer.
Where does the word scuro come from? 🔎
Scuro comes from the Latin obscurus (dark, obscure), through a process of apheresis, which is the dropping of the initial syllable "ob-". The Latin word obscurus was connected to the idea of something covered or hidden, with particular reference to a cloudy sky before a storm. This meteorological origin is reflected in the various figurative meanings of the word, such as when we describe a "dark" expression to indicate a worried or angry face.
Did you know that... 🤓
From Dante to everyday life: scuro vs oscuro
In the Divine Comedy, Dante writes "mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" (I found myself in a dark forest) and not "selva scura". Why? These two words have different meanings today despite having the same Latin origin (obscurus).
"Scuro" describes physical realities or sad situations: a room with little light, a color tending toward black, a serious expression on someone's face, or a difficult moment. It's the word of everyday life.
"Oscuro" instead maintains a more literary tone and is used for what is mysterious, incomprehensible, or unsettling: un passato oscuro (a mysterious past), un presagio oscuro (an unsettling omen), un significato oscuro (an obscure meaning).
So Dante's "selva oscura" is not simply a dark forest, but a symbolic place of spiritual loss and mystery.
