what the heck is a "moolinyan"??

I think it means eggplant. It is a slur to black people.

are you SERIOUS??! wow. hope i didn't O-fend nobody. Just curious; heard Tony say it last night.thanks anyway VERCETTI dahhhling.

It actually means eggplant?! Like eggplant in Italian?

I knew it was a slur against black people but where did you hear it means eggplant?

Yeah, it means "eggplant". The slander against blacks comes from the (outside) color of the eggplant.

I wonder if there is more than one word meaning eggplant??? My parents/family have a totally different word. I couldn't begin to spell it, so I'll type it as it sounds. Perhaps it's Sicilian or maybe slang, I don't know, but eggplant in my family is pronounced: "Meel-in-jon-a" Are there any others Sicilian/Italians here who have heard of that?


TIS

I think, TIS, that your family's most likely right and that Tony and his boys have put the word through some really hard New Jersey-mob guy-no respect for proper pronounciation-slang.
as they have with many other words.

I've heard both, and both are used as slurs against African-Americans.
Livia used yet another slur during the first season: "dizzoon." In my old neighborhood, the Napolitan's pronounced it as "tzi-TZOON."

For what it's worth, it could be a primarily Sicilian thing. It's essentially a different language, it certainly developed alongside 'standard' Italian, but it didn't come into much contact with it, and as a result different pronunciations and slang formed.

Just as an aside to the different terms in Southern Italian dialects or Sicilian, I've heard Italian-Americans refer in English to blacks as "eggplant-colored," so that would tie the rather Americanized term "moolignon" to the Italian/Sicilian words for "eggplant."

Nick

I guess off topic but I can't see starting a thread on this. Remember in one episode, Tony comes downstairs in the morning and Carm says to him "What's the matter Tony, you look a little "Moosha moosh"?? Don't know the exact translation, but recall hearing it in my youth. I take it to mean more or less "out of sorts", or maybe not feeling just right. Ha ha..as you can see my Italian is very limited to short expressions and phrases.

TIS