Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 16:53:59 -0700

From: Peter Farruggio pfarr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU

Subject: Re: Agita



I have no academic background in Italian language...just learned Southern

dialect at home...Agita is a noun and means "upset stomach" usually

provoked by stress. I don't know if this jibes with a dictionary, but it's

how the speakers use it...Don't think there is any derivation from the

participle



Pete Farruggio





For a newspaper column, I am trying to trace the word "agita" in English.

It is absent from most dictionaries, both standard and slang, and Anne

Soukhanov, in her "Word Watch," notes 1982 as an "early" citation, which

seems awfully late to me. Does anyone have anything earlier, or a sense of

how the Italian "agitato" became "agita"?



Thanks,

Evan

--

Evan Morris

words1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]well.com