Bookbinding

Il rimbocco is the strip of leather or cloth folded over the edge of the board and pasted down on the inside, and English calls it the turn-in — a name that records only the movement of the hand. The Italian noun sits on a verb that is still in daily domestic use, and that is what makes it worth a paragraph. Rimboccare is to fold something back on itself. Rimboccare le coperte is what a parent does at bedtime, folding the blanket back and pushing it under the mattress, and rimboccarsi le maniche is to turn one’s sleeves back before starting a hard job — which English says in exactly the same picture, « roll up your sleeves », and means exactly the same thing by it. So the binder at the board is not reaching for a technical term at all. He is doing to the leather what anyone does to a bedsheet and to a shirt cuff: turning the edge back on itself until the raw side stops showing. Learn the household verb and the trade word costs nothing.