A Journey through the Italian Tourism Lexicon, between Anglicisms, Neologisms, et al

Abstract

English has always been the most important source of exogenous enrichment of modern Italian vocabulary. Since the end of World War II and particularly from the 1950s, English has been the main “donor language” for Italian, even if its influence has not always been consistent. Such influence seems to have reached its peak between the 1970s and the 1980s, then went through a period of relative “quiescence” before increasing again in the 21st century. By means of a corpus of one hundred and twenty documents selected from brochures, specialized magazines and websites for each year of the first five years of the 2020s, the present paper aims at investigating, from a qualitative perspective, the English loanwords which, along with neologisms, French words, and those of Latin origin, have been entering and enriching the Italian domain of contemporary tourism, thus contributing to its international appeal.

Received: 5 January 2026 / Revised: 20 February 2026 / Accepted: 3 March 2026 / Published: 25 March 2026