Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Confetti
Happy New year! Maybe you threw confetti, those small bits of colored paper sprinkled festively for celebrations. Confetti is the Italian word for “sweets.” The singular of confetti is “confetto,” a word not entirely useful in English unless after a wild celebration you want to say, “I think I may have a confetto in my eye.” In Italy, confetti were a traditional gift of sugar-coated almonds handed out for celebratory occasions. Confetti remain a traditional symbolic gift for Italian weddings, births, baptisms, or communions where modern confetti have attained complicated, artistic forms from elegant flowers to sophisticated centerpieces.
The Italian version of our paper confetti is called coriandoli, the Italian word for coriander seeds. Coriander seeds and small candies were thrown by Italians during Renaissance times for carnivals and weddings until a Milanese businessman discovered it was much cheaper (and less hazardous) to throw bits of paper. At the time, Milan was one of the main hubs of silk manufacturing, so the businessman began selling the small disks left from holes punched in paper bedding used in breeding silkworms. The small bits of paper became a popular and fun alternative that retained the name coriandoli.
Today, most places ban the use of paper confetti because it can be difficult to clean up and is considered damaging to animals and the environment. Even biodegradable confetti can be quite messy. There are dozens of websites and companies dedicated to replacing confetti with everything from flower petals and dried herbs to coconut shavings. Rice is also banned, not because of the pervasive myth that birds will eat it and explode, but because it can become a messy slipping hazard to people. Scientists agree that, to the dismay of rice farmers, birds eat rice in the wild all the time and have yet to explode like avian IEDs.
