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Glite Dictionary
padrone

padrone

1 9.9
A person who runs a small restaurant or inn and may treat workers badly, often in Italian contexts
  • noun
  • /pəˈdroʊni/
  • Archaic
: padrón
  • The fifth was a story about a New Jersey politician who used the Heimlich maneuver to save the life of a Mafia boss in a barroom, where they were having a couple of beers together, when the padrone began to choke to death on a chunk of peppery-hot Slim Jim sausage.

Examples

  • "I would suggest that we hurry, padrone," said the heavyset Corsican in a hooded parka.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Most industries offered hazardous conditions and very low wages, lowered further after the padrone took out his share.

  • All these are yours, padrone.

    Capone (1975)

  • But her spirit is soon reined in by her abusive husband, who teaches her with brute force that he is the padrone.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Many thousands of Italian immigrants found themselves prisoners of the padrone, or patron, system of labor.

  • Edoardo knew Zuccoli was his only chance to escape the padrone, whose miserly annual contracts consigned the family to daily drudgery.

Antonyms

employee
∞ 1.3

A person hired by a company or another person to do paid work

worker
600 1.0

A person employed to do physical or routine jobs

How Controlling

overlord
21 8.4
padrone
  • Archaic
1 9.9
boss
∞ 1.0
employer
791 2.7
owner
∞ 1.0
proprietor
39 4.8

Surface Forms

padrone singular
padrones plural

Etymology

Padrone comes from Italian and is related to the Latin word patronus and the English word patron, all from a root meaning 'father' or 'protector'. So a padrone was like a 'boss' who arranged work or ran a business, which is why the word means 'owner' or 'employer' and can also mean someone who sometimes treated workers badly.