At the airport

Twelfth on this list is atterrare, and it is the same picture as « to land » with the two languages walking away from it in opposite directions. The plain sense agrees, and atterriamo alle sette e mezza, the sentence beside this entry, holds no surprise at all. What English then did with its own verb, Italian refuses to do. « Land » became a verb of getting: you land a job, land a contract, land a part in a film, land a punch, and when things go badly you land in trouble or somebody lands you with the washing-up. Not one of those crosses over. Atterrare never means to obtain, and for those sentences Italian changes verb altogether — ottenere un posto, finire nei guai, rifilare qualcosa a qualcuno. The branch it grew instead is transitive and violent. Atterrare with an object is to put something on the ground: atterrare l’avversario is to floor an opponent, atterrare un albero is to fell a tree. The same earth lies under both verbs, and one language stood up from it holding a prize, the other standing over a body.