Meaning
Freelance photographers who aggressively pursue celebrities to take and sell candid pictures, often working in packs and without consent. The Italian plural form has become the default in English even when referring to the trade or a single photographer in the aggregate. The word is strongly pejorative, implying intrusion and harassment, and it has broadened slightly to cover any aggressive celebrity-chasing lens. Almost always negative in connotation; an Italian plural that casual English often treats as a collective singular. Regional use: General English (borrowed from Italian).
Origin
The name comes from Paparazzo, the freelance news photographer played by Walter Santesso in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita (1960), and English adopted the Italian plural almost immediately: Merriam-Webster dates first known use to 1961, and by the late 1960s the word had become a generic English term for intrusive photographers. The character's name has competing origin stories. Co-screenwriter Ennio Flaiano said it was taken from Coriolano Paparazzo, a restaurant owner named in George Gissing's 1901 travel book By the Ionian Sea, encountered in Margherita Guidacci's 1957 Italian translation; Fellini told Time magazine the name suggested to him a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging. In Flaiano's Abruzzo dialect, paparazzo also names a local clam and has been likened to the click of a camera shutter.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- paparazzis
- paparazzo
- papped
Usage Examples
- The paparazzi had camped outside the hotel long before the wedding party came out.
- A lone paparazzo followed their taxi across half the city.
- She was papped buying groceries, and the photos were online within the hour.