/tiˈrare un ˈpakko/ lit. ‘to throw someone a parcel’
Italian idiom, slang. To not turn up for a date or meeting without telling the other person.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Italian speaker.
How do people use Tirare un pacco
?
Youthful slang, mostly heard among friends and in dating talk. The person left waiting comes in as a pronoun: “mi ha tirato un pacco” (he stood me up), “non tirarmi il pacco stasera”. It’s too casual for work, where you’d say someone “non si è presentato”.
Also said tirare il pacco, paccare
Tirare un pacco
in real sentences
-
Dai, non tirare il pacco!
Come on, don’t stand me up!
Tatoeba, sentence by Guybrush88, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Tirare un pacco
come from?
English Wiktionary lists “tirare un pacco” and the verb “paccare” as Italian for “stand someone up”, and separately gives “pacco” the slang sense of a swindle. Treccani’s “pacco” entry covers only parcels and bundles, so the slang hasn’t made it into that dictionary, and we found no source that explains how a parcel came to mean a let-down.
Mistakes learners make with Tirare un pacco
Forgetting that “pacco” is also slang for a con. English Wiktionary glosses “tirare il pacco a qualcuno” as “to con somebody”, and in some regions that’s the first meaning people hear, so make the context clear if you mean a missed date.
Other Italian idioms like Tirare un pacco
Spot a mistake in Tirare un pacco
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.