MONDO ADVERB (YOUTH CULTURE)

In young people's slang, originally in the US: utterly, ultimately, extremely. Etymology: Formed by interpreting the (originally Italian) word mondo 'world' as an adverb, in attributive uses of phrases such as mondo bizarro (see below). History and Usage: In 1961 the Italian film director Gualtiero Jacopetti produced the film Mondo Cane, which was released in the English-speaking world in 1963 as A Dog's Life. Ostensibly a documentary, it consisted of thirty sequences of such peculiar aspects of human behaviour as cannibalism and a restaurant for dogs, and became wildly popular: the original title became sufficiently well known for other films of an equally anarchic nature to be given similar titles (often with a mock-Italian flavour), such as Mondo Bizarro (1966) and Mondo Trasho (1970). During the seventies such formations became more common outside the cinema, with the meaning 'the weirder or seedier side of (a particular place, activity, etc.)': mondo bizarro began to be used attributively in the sense 'extremely bizarre', and mondo began to be reinterpreted as an adverb (and the following word as an adjective). The connotations of seediness or grossness persisted for some time, but by the time it had been absorbed into Valspeak in the early eighties it had become a simple intensifier, similar to serious--see seriousÜ--and likewise also sometimes used as an adjective. It was, however, the adoption of mondo by the Turtles that led to its spreading outside North America, predominantly in expressions of approval like mondo cool. It was just part of a week in which the news, particularly on ABC, went further and further into the realm of Mondo Bizarro. Washington Post 19 Apr. 1980, section C, p. 1 Last weekend Mom let me go visit her and stay in the dorm and everything. It was MONDO party time. Mimi Pond The Valley Girl's Guide to Life (1982), p. 49 Why this fascination with Miller? Because he's so mondo cool, even though he's not British and doesn't have spiked hair! Stereo Review Apr. 1986