The paper traces the discussion about the abus des mots during the Enlightenment and considers how this discussion was echoed in Il Caffè. Here, the cultural hegemony of the Accademia della Crusca was attacked mainly by way of a ›democratic‹ vision of literature, open to contributions coming from foreign languages, as well as from science and technology. This critical attitude merged with the peculiar struggle engaged by the Verri brothers and by Cesare Beccaria in order to promote the adoption of a straightforward language in legislation, as a part of the general fight for the transparency of words and against the linguistic abuses exposed in Locke’s Essay.
