Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond. From The Local, Italy.

You’ll find the hospitality the Watermill second to none and we’ll cut ourselves in four to make sure you are well looked after. Not literally, of course, but ci faremo in quattro, we’ll make ourselves in four, is the expressive Italian way of saying we’ll bend over backwards to make you feel at home.

It’s just one of several Italian phrases using the number four, according to the English-language Italian online newspaper The Local. They include four cats and four eyes.

In Italy, if four cats turn up to a party or an event, nobody else has: “The expression essentially means ‘barely anyone’ or ‘very few people’. No one but a handful of felines, in fact.”

Picture: The Local, Italy.

In English, ‘four eyes’ is a disparaging way of describing somebody who wears glasses, but in Italian a quattr’occhi, might be better translated as ‘for your eyes only.’ “It means, literally, ‘between four eyes’ – in other words, ‘between the two of us’. It implies a meeting both in person and in private, making it ‘face-to-face’ and ‘one-on-one’ at the same time.”

You can read more about the use of quattro in Italian expressions in The Local by clicking here. 

We’ll cut ourselves in four for you

Ci faremo in quattro to bring you a week of inspiring creativity, warm hospitality, delicious food and wine, stunning locations and the convivial company of like-minded people. Come and join us! Just click here.

Painters in the Watermill garden on Penelope Anstice’s course last year.