Mining law and extraction

The last entry is il sondaggio esplorativo, and its noun does two jobs that English keeps apart. Il sondaggio is this borehole, and it is equally the opinion poll on the evening news, i sondaggi elettorali; the verb sondare serves both, and sondare il terreno is to test the ground before committing to anything. English has to choose between « a borehole » and « a poll », and the reason is that our matching verb, « to sound », came in late and alone, borrowed from Old French sonder, with no family of its own. It landed among three unrelated words that were already spelled that way. « Sound » the noise goes back through French to Latin sonus. « Sound » meaning whole or healthy is Old English gesund, the same word as modern German gesund. And « a sound » that ships sail up, as in Plymouth Sound, is Old English sund. Italian keeps four separate words for all of that — il suono, sano, lo stretto, sondare — and pays for the tidiness with one noun doing double duty.