The driving school

La percezione del pericolo hides a family an English reader already owns without knowing it. Il pericolo continues Latin periculum, and periculum did not start out meaning danger. It was a trial, an attempt, a putting to the test, built on the root of experiri, to try out. From that same root English has « experience », which is what is left once the trying is over, and « experiment », which is the trying done on purpose. « Peril » reached us through French from the very word itself, so the pair il pericolo and « peril » is a real relation and not a resemblance. The etymology also explains the width of the Italian noun. Il pericolo is the hazard on the road, the abstract risk of a thing going wrong, and the warning on the sign — pericolo di valanghe on a mountain road. One habit follows from it and catches every learner: the adjective describes the thing that threatens, una curva pericolosa, while the person threatened is not pericoloso at all but in pericolo.