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According to Merriam–Webster 'pescatarian' is a noun which means 'one whose diet includes fish but no other meat' and its derivation is 'probably from Italian pesce fish (from Latin piscis) + English vegetarian'.

Question: Is there an Italian word which have the same meaning?

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    More probably from the Latin stem, rather than from Italian.
    – egreg ♦
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 21:34
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    On a second thought, we also have "piscivoro", but it refers primarily to animals: wordreference.com/definizione/piscivoro
    – Tobia Tesan
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 10:34

2 Answers 2

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Pescatarian -> Pescetariano
Pescetarianism -> Pescetarianismo

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    While it did make it to the Devoto-Oli in 2013 or something, it's worth noting that it's nowhere as commonplace as "pescetariano" and, especially, "pescetarianism" in English. The author of that Wikipedia article might very well have coined the term by calque, since "pescetarianesimo" returns 88 (eighty-eight) results from Google, all fairly recent. The word itself in its construction is kind of weird, a pastiche like "motorcade", and stands out as alien in a language that still loves neoclassical compounds.
    – Tobia Tesan
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 23:33
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    Of course I meant to write "nowhere as commonplace as "pescetarian" etc"
    – Tobia Tesan
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 14:55
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    Google Ngram does not even make it to find one single result for both words.
    – funforums
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 17:38
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    I find it hardly surprising. Frankly, I don't see this word taking off in Italian except among those who have first encountered its English counterpart, in no small part due to the fact that it's not a true compound, and thus difficult to understand and unesasy to the ear of the Italian speaker (compare piscivoro: even if you have never heard the word, you instantly know that it's the word for somebody or something that eats fish)
    – Tobia Tesan
    Commented Apr 11, 2015 at 10:26
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In italiano non esiste una parola che indica il solo consumo di pesce in una dieta; il termine "pescetariano" è arcaico e non comprensibile attualmente da nessuno.

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    È arcaico? Interessante, avrei pensato che fosse un neologismo, ricalcato dall'inglese. Hai qualche esempio di uso antico?
    – DaG
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 21:03
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    Sarei profondamente sorpreso se fosse un arcaismo. In particolare, mi risulta "vegetariano" venga dalla radice latina "vegetare", ma non mi sembra esista "pescetare" in latino.
    – Tobia Tesan
    Commented Apr 11, 2015 at 10:14

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