Pinocchio

American  

[pi-noh-kee-oh] / pɪˈnoʊ kiˌoʊ /

noun

1. the hero of Carlo Collodi's children's story, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), a wooden puppet who comes to life as a boy and whose nose grows longer whenever he tells a lie.

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Etymology

Origin of Pinocchio

< Italian: literally, pine seed, pine cone, equivalent to pin ( o ) pine ¹ + -occhio < Vulgar Latin *-uc ( u ) lu ( m ), Latin -i-culum; see -i-, -cule ¹

Example Sentences

Genetic and anatomical studies now show that the reptile long referred to as the Pinocchio chameleon is not the species scientists thought it was.

From Science Daily • Dec. 13, 2025

Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale "like Pinocchio" - then the creature spat him back out.

From BBC • Feb. 14, 2025

Two years after “The Matrix” made rooting against AI a moral imperative, Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” asked audiences, instead, to empathize with a “mecha” boy with a Pinocchio complex.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2024

The lavish folk tale draws from the song "When You Wish Upon a Star" from the 1940 cartoon film "Pinocchio," about a puppet wishing to become a real boy.

From Reuters • Nov. 20, 2023

Their names were as strange to me as their contents: Pinocchio, Aesop’s Fables and the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm.

From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane