Having a short arm “Ha il braccino corto” (Ha il braccino corto) is a typical expression used to describe a very stingy person. It might seem to mean having an arm so short that it doesn’t reach the wallet, but its origin seems to be less from this, but from the fact that cloth sellers, in the past, actually shortened their arms. Fabric was often sold “by the arm” (one arm, two arms of cloth), where the arm was that of the seller. Sometimes the sellers would use young apprentices to measure the fabric: being very young, their arms were shorter, and the merchant made money from this “game.” Because disputes often arose between seller and buyer, so much so that they turned into actual brawls, the “Florentine arm” measurement was established in Florence. A 58.32 cm long bar was placed on Via dei Cerchi, near Via della Condotta. In the event of a dispute, the customer and merchant would go there to check the measurement against the bar on the wall.
Study Italian in Italy 