thumb|The [[Terra di Lavoro in the 18th century, included in the so-called Campania Felix.]]
Terrone (; plural , feminine ) is an epithet of the Italian language with which the inhabitants of Northern and Central Italy depreciatively indicate the inhabitants of Southern Italy.
The term certainly originates from the word (Italian for "land"), with developments that are not always clear, and was perhaps linked in the past by the denominations of southern areas such as the Terra di Lavoro (in Campania) or the Terra di Bari and the Terra d'Otranto (in Apulia).
The word was recorded for the first time in 1950 by Bruno Migliorini, as an appendix to Alfredo Panzini's Dizionario moderno ("Modern Dictionary") in 1950.
History
thumb|left|upright=1.4|The former [[Lingotto|FIAT plant of the Lingotto in Turin, where many Italians emigrated from Southern Italy to work]]
Until the 1950s, terrone kept the classist meaning of "peasant", that is "person working the land (hence the word terra)". At one point, even people migrating from the relatively more rural regions of Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany to the industrialised Lombardy had been accordingly nicknamed terroni del nord ("Northern Terroni").
From the 20th century onwards, the term terrone began to be used in Northern Italy to refer to those originally from Southern Italy, with particular reference to emigrants looking for work.
However, it was not until the Italian economic miracle, when a great number of Southerners migrated to the industrial centers of Northern Italy, that it spread in large urban centers and in the countryside of Northern Italy with often highly derogatory and insulting connotations, and is similar to other words of the Italian language designating farm workers (, , , and ).
In a 2005 court case, the Supreme Court of Cassation upheld a ruling by the Savona justice of the peace, which recognized the discriminatory intent of a person who used the term to define another person, ordering the former to compensate the offended party for moral damages.
Although the term remains largely perceived as derogatory and racist, it has also undergone a re-evaluation and a joking use of identity by some southern Italians, especially among those who emigrated to the North. It is also frequently used by the comic trio of Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo, in scenes in which Giovanni and Giacomo make fun of Aldo by calling him terrone in an ironic and joking way, as Aldo has Sicilian origins.
See also
- Racism in Italy
- Italy's North-South economic divide
- Polentone