Drive technology

The thirteenth entry is la resistenza di frenatura, and the noun in the middle of it does two jobs that English long ago handed to two different words. La resistenza is first the property: how hard a conductor makes it for a current to pass, counted in ohms, which is « resistance ». But la resistenza is also the object bolted into the cabinet — the wound component that a drive dumps its braking energy into — and there English says « resistor », a separate noun built with the ending « -or » that names a device rather than a quality. Italian never made that second word. Una resistenza da dieci ohm is a part somebody can hold in one hand, while la resistenza dell’avvolgimento is a reading on a meter, and only the article and the company the word keeps will say which is meant. The same noun has a third life outside the workshop, la Resistenza of the war years, so even the capital letter is doing work. When a catalogue asks for la resistenza di frenatura, it wants hardware and not a measurement.