Things and work

The second entry is la matita, the pencil, and it is the only word on this page that started life in a mineral cabinet. Before graphite, a drawing stick was cut from haematite, the red iron ore, and the Italian name of that stone is ematite, taken from the Greek haimatites, blood-like, which is built in turn on haima, blood. The unstressed first syllable then fell away, as unstressed first syllables often do, and the stone came out of the process as la matita. English kept the mineral whole and shut it in a display case: « haematite » is the label under a lump of red rock, and for most readers that case is the only place the word is ever met. Yet the same haima is sitting inside « haemoglobin » and « haemorrhage », where the blood is still plainly visible. So an English reader owns the root of matita twice over, once in a museum and once in a hospital, and has never once used it for the thing in a pencil case. The stone itself is long gone, since a modern matita is graphite in wood, and only the name stayed behind.