You sit down at a picturesque bar on a quiet piazza and order your aperol spritz aperitifwaiting for your date to join you.
But the minutes tick by and they don’t appear, and three quarters of an hour later you find yourself draining the last drops of bitter orange liquid alone as your ice cubes clink against the side of your empty glass.
You’ve been stood up: or in Italian, your date has pulled the package – literally, pulled the package on you.
Either he pulled the package or he had an accident.
He either flaked or he had an accident.
Please don’t throw me the package.
Please don’t bail on me.
A very common variant is pull a bin (literally, to pull a bin).
I waited for hours, but he threw me a can.
I waited for hours, but she blew me off.
I wasn’t the one who threw you a can.
It wasn’t me who stood you up.
As colloquialisms, these expressions are flexible, and can be phrased as any of throw / do / give the / a bin to someone (pull/do/give the/a bin to someone) or pull / pack / a package to someone (pull/do the/a package to someone) while retaining the same meaning.
Then there’s bins – literally, ‘to bin’ – which also means to bail on someone.
You can’t rip people off.
You can’t stand people up.
You screwed up and ruined the party.
You bailed on the party and ruined it.
Where do these expressions come from? No one actually seems to know for sure, though some have ventured to speculate.
One theory is that pull a bin or bins refers to the idea of offering someone something good only to ‘pull out’ rubbish instead – or simply that you’re treating the other person or your relationship with them like trash.
Similarly, pull the package could refer to the old street vendor’s scam of making a sale and then handing the customer an empty package with something worthless inside, for them to discover the truth only when it’s too late to do anything about it.
Aside from missing an appointment, both phrases can also mean to renege on an agreement or to scam someone, so these explanations make particular sense if you bear in mind their broader meanings.
You have seen how a bin is thrown.
That’s how you pull a con.
I bought those boots online for a very low price, but they never made it to me. I think they threw a package at me.
I bought those boots online at a very low price, but they never arrived. I guess they scammed me.
Another common phrase for ‘stand someone up’ is to stand up to someone – literally, to give someone a hole (made of your absence).
I waited for hours, but he stood me up and didn’t even apologize.
I waited for hours, but he stood me up and never even apologised.
I shouldn’t have stood him up.
I shouldn’t have stood him up.
This one always means to stand someone up (and not to trick or scam them).
Fortunately, going out to have an aperitif – or two – by yourself with only a book or a phone for company is perfectly acceptable in Italy. Eat eat.
Do you have an Italian word you’d like us to feature? If so, please email us with your suggestion.