fresco
noun
Did you know?
If the word fresco brings to mind images of eating an alfresco meal—that is, a meal eaten outside “in the fresh air”—your gut is on the right track: fresco is Italian for “fresh,” and the culinary usage is relatively common in English. But what puts the “fresh” in the English fresco is not so appetizing: the name of this art form refers to the fresh plaster used in it. Fresco is an ancient art, used as early as the Minoan civilization on Crete, but it reached the height of its popularity during the Italian Renaissance of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Fresco comes in two types: in fresco secco (“dry fresco”), a dry wall is soaked in limewater, and lime-resistant pigments are then applied; in buon fresco (“good fresco”; buon fresco is also called “true” fresco), used by Michelangelo in his 16th century Sistine Chapel frescos, pigments are fused directly with wet plaster.
Did you know?
Fresco and the Art World
The Italian word fresco means “fresh” and comes from a Germanic word akin to the source of English fresh. In the Renaissance, pittura a fresco, meaning “painting freshly,” referred to paint applied while the plaster on the wall was still wet, as opposed to pittura a secco “painting dryly,” in which paint is applied when the plaster was dry. In English, fresco appears earliest as part of the phrase in fresco; it does not appear as a noun referring to a painting until 1670. A different sense of Italian fresco, meaning “fresh air,” appears in the phrase al fresco “outdoors,” borrowed into English as alfresco and used particularly in reference to dining outdoors.
Examples of fresco in a Sentence
Rob Wile, NBC News, 12 Mar. 2024
The best place to find a good queso fresco is at one of San Diego’s many Mexican markets, or mercados.
—Caron Golden, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Feb. 2024
Pregnant Hispanics are at highest risk, likely due to eating traditional soft cheeses such as queso fresco and other foods made with milk that is unpasteurized, the FDA said.
—Cnn.com Wire Service, The Mercury News, 8 Feb. 2024
The company has recalled 58 products, including queso fresco, cotija cheese, yogurt, and sour cream.
—Daphne Lee, Verywell Health, 8 Feb. 2024
Cheese recall: Queso fresco, other products previously recalled The multistate and multi-year investigation dates back to 2014 as officials had previously investigated listeria outbreaks connected to Rizo-López Foods in 2021 and 2017, with cases dating back to 2014.
—USA TODAY, 8 Feb. 2024
That same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also issued a food safety alert that officially linked an ongoing listeria outbreak (which the organization began investigating back in 2017) to cheese samples from Rizo-López Foods—specifically its queso fresco and cotija.
—Jenna Ryu, SELF, 7 Feb. 2024
Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, compares the state of the laugh-track sitcom to that of a much older medium: the fresco.
—Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2024
The frescoes and the room in which they were painted were found during excavation efforts in the Regio IX area of Pompeii, the Post noted.
—Tori Latham, Robb Report, 12 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fresco.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near fresco
Cite this Entry
“Fresco.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fresco. Accessed 1 May. 2024.
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fresco
noun
Italian, from fresco "fresh"
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