paparazzo

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The Word of the Day for May 19 is:

paparazzo   \pah-puh-RAHT-soh\   noun
     : a freelance photographer who aggressively pursues celebrities for the 
purpose of taking candid photographs

Example sentence:
     As a child star she had been constantly pursued by paparazzi, but only a 
single photographer showed up at her 21st-birthday bash.

Did you know?
     We can thank Italian for "paparazzo" and its plural "paparazzi." On the 
immediate origin of "paparazzo," there is complete agreement -- it was the 
surname of one of four aggressive photographers in Federico Fellini's 1959 film 
_La dolce vita_. Opinions divide, however, on where Fellini got the word. 
According to Fellini himself, the name was taken from an opera libretto. But 
"Paparazzo" was also the name of a hotelkeeper in George Gissing's 1901 travel 
memoir _By the Ionian Sea_. Some folks have also noted that in the dialect of 
Ennio Flaiano, who co-wrote the script of _La dolce vita_ with Fellini, 
"paparazzo" refers to a kind of clam that snaps its shell open and shut 
frequently. This supposedly reminded Flaiano of the action of a camera shutter. 





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