Biology and ecology in Italian

The seventh entry is la preda, and the English word facing it has a twin one line above that nobody notices. Latin praeda meant booty, the thing carried off — and it reached English twice. The first time it came the slow way: praeda wore down into old French preie, which crossed the Channel and settled as « prey ». The second time it came straight out of a book. Praeda had produced the verb praedari, to plunder, and from that praedator, the plunderer, which scholars lifted whole into English as « predator » — at first for a robber, and only much later for the animal at the top of la catena alimentare. So the hunted and the hunter are, in English, the same word twice over: one worn smooth by centuries of speech, one still in its Latin coat. Italian shows the pair undisguised, la preda beside il predatore, looking like relatives because they are. Keep the direction of the old word: it names what is taken, never the taker. The taker is a later invention built on top of it.