lettere

Lettere is an Italian noun with several related meanings. Primarily, it is the plural of lettera, referring to letters of the alphabet, or to written correspondence in its epistolary sense. In everyday usage, it can denote the individual characters that make up a script, as in le lettere dell’alfabeto, or a written message, such as una lettera.

In addition to its concrete senses, lettere also designates a field of study in universities and schools. The term is commonly used to name the humanities, historically known as the Faculty of Lettere. Programs under this designation typically include literature, linguistics, philosophy, history, archaeology, art history, and related disciplines. In many contexts, Lettere is paired with Filosofia as Lettere e Filosofia, reflecting a broad humanities curriculum that emphasizes human culture, language, and critical analysis.

Etymology traces lettere to the Latin littera, meaning a letter or character of the alphabet, and related forms appear across Romance languages (for example, lettre in French, letras in Spanish). In Italian, the word emphasizes both the tangible letters used in writing and the broader scholarly traditions focused on language, culture, and interpretation.

In usage, the plural lettere can appear in phrases like le lettere dell’alfabeto, lettere d’amore, or lettere accademiche referring to epistolary correspondence or to the corpus of literary and linguistic study. The term remains a common way to refer to the humanities in academic and cultural contexts, distinct from the natural or social sciences. See also alfabet, epistolario, and Lettere (disambiguation) for related senses.