Terrone Info
- This word is derived from terra (land or earth), because it refers to an agricultural worker who used to work on the land on the large estates in the south of Italy. It has become the most common word used by northern Italians to describe a southern Italian in a pejorative and racist way, usually with the additional meaning of “ignorant, dirty, uncivilized” being understood. The term gained currency in the 1960s and 1970s when there was widespread immigration of southern Italians into the industrial towns and cities of the northwest. In Italy today insulting terms of a racist nature concentrate largely on foreign immigrants from outside the European Community, and the term terrone is less widely used and often takes on humorous overtones (especially when used by southerners themselves). Its negative sense has, however, been given a boost by the anti-southern polemic of the Lega Nord.