Word of the Week

"Wow, everything looks picobello!" If you're a young adult who's just moved into your own place, you'd probably much rather hear that from your mom than the old, "Clean up your room!"

Or if you've finished your spring cleaning and actually vacuumed the space behind the refrigerator and wiped the cobwebs from the highest corners on the ceiling, you're also likely to exclaim, "Finally, picobello!"

To express the ultimate state of cleanliness, Germans use a made-up word with an Italian touch. While bello means beautiful in Italian, pico has no meaning, though in Latin it means small. It is more likely, then, that picobello is derived from the German word piekfein, meaning posh.

So don't be too surprised if you praise an Italian for his picobello apartment and get a blank stare in return.