An attractive story from Italy, not just because it allows me to decorate the pages of Wordability with this delightful picture of a daily pollen flower. An eight-year-old may now see a word which he invented recognised as an official Italian word.

Matteo, a schoolboy in the town of Copparo in central Italy, used the word Petaloso in a school project to describe a flower as ‘full of petals’. His teacher Margherita Aurora was so impressed she contacted the Accademia Crusca, guardians of the language, and received an encouraging reply.

They said that while the word was not yet in sufficient usage to be able to garner official recognition, it was “well formed word, and could be used in Italian. Your word is beautiful and clear.”

Of course it only takes a bit of social media encouragement and publicity for the word to start being used an awful lot, in order to force lexicographic minds, and while the initial flurry will certainly not be sufficient to get it officially recognised as a word, repeated genuine usage might just do the trick.

Do we need a word for ‘full of petals’ in English? Doubtful, and doubtful as well that it wound quite as lyrical as Pelatoso does. And maybe the lilt of Italian is part of its appeal. After all, other words apparently on the radar for official Italian recognition include Photoshappare and Spoilerare, both of which are ugly Italianisations of English words which I suspect the language could well do without.

So good luck to Pelatoso and who knows, maybe it could make the jump to English and make our own language that tiny bit more beautiful.