al dente in Italian

IPA: /al ˈdɛn.te/ [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: Literally, “to the tooth”, a shortening of duro al dente (“hard for the tooth”), croccante al dente (“crunchy for the tooth”) etc. with the ellipsis being reinforced by the fact that al/alla is commonly found in these contexts to indicate dish ingredients. Etymology templates: {{yesno||l|L}} L, {{m-g|to the tooth}} “to the tooth”, {{lit|to the tooth}} Literally, “to the tooth” Head templates: {{head|it|phrase}} al dente

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

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      "name": "m-g"
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    {
      "args": {
        "1": "to the tooth"
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      "expansion": "Literally, “to the tooth”",
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, “to the tooth”, a shortening of duro al dente (“hard for the tooth”), croccante al dente (“crunchy for the tooth”) etc. with the ellipsis being reinforced by the fact that al/alla is commonly found in these contexts to indicate dish ingredients.",
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      "expansion": "al dente",
      "name": "head"
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    "al‧dèn‧te"
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      "parts": [
        "al‧dèn‧te"
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          "name": "Italian terms with collocations",
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          "english": "noodles to the tooth",
          "tags": [
            "collocation"
          ],
          "text": "pasta al dente",
          "translation": "noodles to the tooth",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Firm to the bite, cooked just right."
      ],
      "id": "en-al_dente-it-phrase-0nsm34Ka",
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        "(pasta) Firm to the bite, cooked just right."
      ]
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          "english": "cooked to the tooth",
          "tags": [
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          ],
          "text": "cotto al dente",
          "translation": "cooked to the tooth",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Just right to the bite."
      ],
      "id": "en-al_dente-it-phrase-34ZlUZsL",
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        "(cooking) Just right to the bite."
      ],
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        "cooking",
        "food",
        "lifestyle"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/al ˈdɛn.te/"
    }
  ],
  "word": "al dente"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
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    "Italian lemmas",
    "Italian multiword terms",
    "Italian phrases",
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      "args": {
        "1": "to the tooth"
      },
      "expansion": "Literally, “to the tooth”",
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    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, “to the tooth”, a shortening of duro al dente (“hard for the tooth”), croccante al dente (“crunchy for the tooth”) etc. with the ellipsis being reinforced by the fact that al/alla is commonly found in these contexts to indicate dish ingredients.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "it",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "al dente",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "al‧dèn‧te"
  ],
  "hyphenations": [
    {
      "parts": [
        "al‧dèn‧te"
      ]
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  "lang_code": "it",
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          "english": "noodles to the tooth",
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          ],
          "text": "pasta al dente",
          "translation": "noodles to the tooth",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
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        "Firm to the bite, cooked just right."
      ],
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        "(pasta) Firm to the bite, cooked just right."
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          "english": "cooked to the tooth",
          "tags": [
            "collocation"
          ],
          "text": "cotto al dente",
          "translation": "cooked to the tooth",
          "type": "example"
        }
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        "Just right to the bite."
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        "(cooking) Just right to the bite."
      ],
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        "food",
        "lifestyle"
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  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/al ˈdɛn.te/"
    }
  ],
  "word": "al dente"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable Italian dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"al dente" meaning in Italian

Phrase