We're talking about the expression: sbarcare il lunario. At first glance, it isn't easy to figure out.

Let's begin our discussion with the noun la luna (the moon). That may help us guess that lunario has something to do with the moon. Originally the month was the interval between one new moon and the next (a sense gleaned from late Old English). The Italian word for "month" is mese from the Latin "mensis," which signified both "month" and "moon."

Il lunario

Il Lunario is well known in Italy as a kind of almanac, aimed at an agricultural readership, providing the phases of the moon of a given year and information about when to plant certain crops, when to cut one's hair to make it grow faster, according to the phases of the moon. Il lunario could be bought at any newsstand and likely still is. There are different editions of the Lunario, each appropriate to the region, since the planting seasons differ from area to area. A famous lunario in Florence is Il vero sesto Cajo Baccelli, named after a 16th-century astrologist. The almanac covers an entire year, month by month, and by extension, the phases of the moon. Loosely interpreted, il lunario is a period of time.

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Sbarcare

We need another piece of the puzzle to fully understand sbarcare il lunario. The verb sbarcare comes from the noun la barca (the boat). Sbarcare is what can be called "a parasynthetic verb," or un verbo parasintentico because it comes from a different part of speech (in this case, the noun la barca) and has a suffix or prefix (in this case, S) and becomes a verb, in this case, sbarcare.

These days, we use the verb sbarcare to mean the opposite of imbarcare (to board), in other words, to disembark or to go ashore. That implies you have reached the shore. In the context of the expression, you make it to the end of the year or month (and give a sigh of relief). You have made it.

That is certainly one interpretation of sbarcare, and the one found in dictionaries. But there is another interpretation, which took a bit of hunting. This interpretation first came up in a search for the expression sbarcare il lunario. The Accademia della Crusca answers questions, and apparently, plenty of people wanted to know about this expression. But then, Wiktionary also gave this alternate definition of sbarcare. 

Sbarcare can also be used in its reflexive form: sbarcarsela, and as a pronominal verb, sbarcarla, to mean cavarsela (to manage, to get by), to overcome an obstacle or critical moment, to survive, more or less. Other similar expressions are:

tirare a campare (to take it one day at a time)

tirare avanti (to hobble along)

riuscire a campare a stento  (to barely manage, with great effort, remaining poor)

tirare avanti la baracca or, more commonly mandare avanti la baracca — Here is the Italian explanation from Accademia della Crusca with an English translation following it, and connecting it to our expression:

 

...dove ‘baracca’ “ha il significato di famiglia, impresa, amministrazione mal organizzata, in cattive condizioni economiche. La baracca infatti è una costruzione provvisoria, di legno o metallo, per ricovero di persone, animali, materiale, ed anche, in senso spregiativo, una casupola, una casa malandata”, proprio come la vita di chi sbarca il lunario. (...where baracca (shack) has the meaning of poorly organized family, business, or  administration, in poor economic conditions. In fact, the shack is a temporary construction, made of wood or metal, for sheltering people, animals, material, and also, in a derogatory sense, a shack, a run-down house," just like the life of those who have trouble making ends meet.)

In the expression sbarcare il lunario, the sense of sbarcare is this: trascorrere per lo più stentatamente e faticosamente, vivendo di espedienti, un periodo di tempo, l’esistenza stessa (to laboriously scrape through, living by expedients, a period of time, existence itself).

In English, we talk about living paycheck to paycheck. That's the idea.

For a more-in-depth explanation of sbarcare il lunario (in Italian), see this article from the Accademia della Crusca.

Finally, here is the clip from Provaci ancora, Prof. It's part of a news broadcast on TV that Renzo is listening to as he cooks dinner.

Il commissario Gaetano Berardi, che conduce l'inchiesta {è...} -Ehm... risalito a lui dopo un'attenta indagine tra un gruppo di aspiranti attori... -Ah. -che sbarcano il lunario vestiti da antichi Romani... -Ciao amore, dov'è papà?

Chief Gaetano Berardi, who is leading the investigation, has... -Um. traced it to him, after a careful investigation into a group of aspiring actors... -Ah. -who make ends meet dressed as ancient Romans... -Hello love, where's Dad?

Captions 3-6, Provaci ancora prof! S3EP1 - Due americane a Roma - Part 17

 Play Caption

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