Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. In the fresh air; outdoors: dining alfresco.
- adj. Taking place outdoors; outdoor: an alfresco conference.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In the open air; out of doors: as, to dine al fresco.
Wiktionary
- adj. Outdoors, open to the atmosphere
- adv. Outdoors; in fresh air.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adv. In the open-air.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. outside a building
- adj. in the open air
Etymologies
- From Italian al ("at the") + fresco ("cool") (Wiktionary)
- Italian al fresco, in the fresh (air) : al, in the (a, to, in from Latin ad; see ad- + il, the from Latin ille; see al-1 in Indo-European roots) + fresco, fresh. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“What is the meaning of the Italian word "alfresco"?”
“There is seating on the real "alfresco" dining terrace outside, but what am I, stupid?”
“They set out a kind of alfresco area under the trees, since none of them really wanted to be inside, and at any rate, Alberichs little sitting room would have been horribly cramped with all of them crammed into it.”
“Get a great taste of Chicago's vegetarian cuisine at the Taste of Chicago Finding Vegetarian support in Chicago Brunch 'alfresco' in”
WN.com - Articles related to Why The May 10, 2010 Philippine Polls Failed: The PCOS Forensics
“A waterfront picnic spot or GOG's best alfresco dining spots have got you covered.”
“If you're already looking forward to the alfresco charms of this summer's Lovebox, then you probably know you've still got some time to wait until you can comfortably quaff pints in the festival sunshine.”
“Jean Loncle An alfresco kitchen is nestled just off the pool and the edge of the terrace, where during rainy season, the Mekong waters rise up to the base of the terrace.”
“In the 1990s the revitalization of Delray Beach resulted in what is now the "in" weekend dining-out hotspot, alfresco-style.”
The Huffington Post: Susan Fogwell: PHOTOS: Escape The Cold & Head To Delray Beach
“But perhaps the Blue Jays will opt to open the roof and play those games alfresco in hopes of freezing Teixeira's bat.”
The Wall Street Journal: Teixeira May Just Hate Cold Weather
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘alfresco’.
-
food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
-
The Journalists' Vocabulary Challenge
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/journalism/vocab.html
prosaic, penultimate, obstreperous, egregious, eleemosynary, fulsome, amorphous, arcane, oleaginous, atavistic, fecund, putative and 89 more...
-
kalidas's Words
crepuscular, mellifluous, ephemeral, diaphanous, zeitgeist, geisterfahrer, infinite, eternal, idyllic, azure, reminiscent, oblivion and 521 more...
-
gcherches's Words
serendipity, roadrunner, inner child, coagulant, esquire, vicissitude, idiot savant, mitigation, affirmation, affirmative, diatribe, affirmative action and 185 more...
-
Words to Try to Use in Colloquial Spe...
surquedry, equivocate, putative, turgid, congeries, irrefragable, quiddity, zaftig, flagitious, bloviate, perfidy, compendious and 227 more...
-
What David Foster Wallace circled in ...
ablative, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, ailanthus, aleatory, alfresco, algolagnia and 474 more...
-
What David Foster Wallace Circled in ...
http://www.slate.com/id/2250784/
ablative absolute, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, aleatory, ailanthus, alfresco, algolagnia and 482 more...
-
2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
-
Dictionary.com Words of the Days of 2001
1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008
acclimate, stentorian, expeditious, proselytize, equable, sacrosanct, indefatigable, gravid, hyperbole, funereal, flibbertigibbet, vet and 353 more...
-
To Learn
paratonnerre, apophenia, aposiopesis, compline, rebarbatiive, comity, averruncate, apodictic, apophasis, farouche, accismus, abligurition and 157 more...
-
poetic & exotic
gloaming, nacreous, limpid, lambent, limn, elegiac, arenaceous, boreal, harlequin, sphinx, alfresco, coruscate and 109 more...
-
free rice fun
words I discovered or was reminded of while playing FreeRice.
alameda, albumen, imperforate, asepsis, flense, asana, coccoid, nevus, lothario, alfresco, evenfall, sepulchral and 2 more...
-
musetta4's list
collateral, penultimate, reliquary, ourobouros, ouroboros, fussy, shenanigans, cogent, enigma, interlocutory, abscond, ambulatory and 8 more...
-
Fin de siécle
(it's nothin special)tabula rasa, avant garde, intelligentsia, dialectic, neo-plastic, manifesto, en plein air, bourgeois, proletariat, le corbusier, city beautiful, degenerate art and 17 more...
-
AmorFati's list
New(ish) words..
impetus, happenstance, coup de grâce, visceral, sentient, wistful, fingerling, transcend, canted, sinew, errant, harking and 85 more...
-
OrbitalCombustion's Words
nepenthe, phrontistery, peregrination, pervicacious, sinistrality, phallogocentric, prolixity, leptokurtic, ineffable, haecceity, lucubration, vicissitudes and 1026 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for alfresco.

misterpolly Used to describe a picnic - alfresco lunch. Compare "aldesko" for those who eat their sandwiches in the office. Dec 22, 2007