'Tiramisu' is Italian for 'pull me up' — referring to the caffeine lift from espresso and cocoa.
An Italian coffee-flavored dessert made with ladyfingers, mascarpone cheese, and cocoa.
From Italian 'tiramisù' (pick-me-up, lift me up), a compound of 'tira' (pull! lift! — second-person imperative of 'tirare', to pull, draw, from Vulgar Latin *tirare, possibly from a Germanic source related to Old High German 'ziari', to pull or draw) + 'mi' (me, the unstressed first-person accusative pronoun, from Latin 'mihi/me') + 'sù' (up, from Latin 'sursum', from 'sub-' + 'versum', turned under-upward). The name therefore literally commands: 'pull me up!' — a culinary boast about the dessert