Pinocchio

American

[pi-noh-kee-oh] / pɪˈnoʊ kiˌoʊ /

noun

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.

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

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Pinocchio

Among them is the so called Pinocchio chameleon, a reptile described for nearly 150 years.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 13, 2025

It features scenes of the rapper running from a pursuer in a Pinocchio mask - a symbol fans interpreted as "lies" following Drake around.

From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2025

Ainsworth, also from the U.K., voiced Pinocchio in Disney+’s live-action “Pinocchio” in 2022 and played Miles in Netflix’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2025

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

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023