Mining

The third entry is il castello di estrazione, the headframe that stands over a shaft, and an English reader is right to see a castle in it. Behind both words lies one Latin pair: castrum, a fort, and its diminutive castellum, a small one. English took castellum through Norman French and got « castle »; it had already taken the plural castra straight into Old English, and that one survives only in place names, the -chester of Manchester and the -caster of Lancaster. Italian kept il castello and never let it settle into stone alone. It is any built frame that stands above something and carries it: il castello di prua at the bow of a ship, il letto a castello that a child climbs into, il castello di carte that falls over, and here the steel tower with the winding sheaves on top. English owns that sense too and keeps it in a single word: « forecastle », the raised structure forward, worn down in speech to « fo’c’sle ». The two languages agree on the fort and part company on the frame, and the frame is what this list needs.