Lift technology

The sixth entry is il limitatore di velocità, and the English term for it is « the overspeed governor ». The word is worth a minute, because a reader who knows it only from the news will go looking for a person. In English, « a governor » is the head of a state, of a prison, of a school or of a central bank; and in the same breath it is a small mechanical device whose only job is to stop a machine from running faster than it should. The lift holds the second sense in one component: a wheel that turns with the car, and grips when the car outruns it. Two habits follow from that. The verb is alive — an engine is « governed » at a set speed, and a delivery van is often « speed-governed » — and the workshop keeps the plainest compounds, « a centrifugal governor », « a governor rope ». Italian never let the two jobs share a word. Il governatore is a person and nothing else, and the device is il limitatore or il regolatore. So the traffic runs one way only: « governor » may come out as limitatore, but governatore never comes out as a part.