🇮🇹 Italian

centro

Did you know? This word is a cognate — it looks similar in English and has the same meaning. Cognates are usually easier to remember!
masculine

il centro

center

Try it

centro
/il ˈtʃɛntro/
← masculine feminine →

How do you say centro in Italian?

IPA
/il ˈtʃɛntro/

How do you pronounce centro in Italian?

centro is pronounced /il ˈtʃɛntro/ in Italian.

Example sentences

Il centro storico è molto affollato durante il fine settimana.

The historic downtown is very crowded during the weekend.

Il centro commerciale nuovo è stato inaugurato ieri ed è già pieno di clienti.

The new shopping center was inaugurated yesterday and is already full of customers.

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Why is it masculine?

Centro is masculine in Italian. It derives from Latin "centrum," which was originally a neuter noun in classical Latin. However, the rule stated is misleading: Italian -o endings typically signal masculine gender, and "centro" follows this regular pattern. Words ending in -o are consistently masculine in Italian, regardless of their Latin gender. The etymology from Latin "centrum" and ultimately from Greek "kentron" (κέντρον) is accurate, but the explanation conflates historical Latin gender with modern Italian gender assignment. The word is masculine primarily because it follows the productive -o masculine ending pattern in modern Italian, not because of a special "gender reassignment" process.

What is the Italian word for center?

The Italian word for center is il centro — masculine.

Gender across languages

LanguageWordArticleGender
🇵🇹 Portuguesecentroomasculine

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