Feelings, more precisely

Twenty-fourth in the list is la diffidenza, and the English word that looks like it has quietly turned round to face the other way. La diffidenza is wariness towards other people or towards an offer: guardare qualcuno con diffidenza is to look at somebody and withhold belief, and the sentence on this page puts it exactly — it arrives quickly and leaves slowly. « Diffidence » in English points at nobody but the speaker. A diffident colleague is not suspicious of you; he is unsure of himself, hangs back, and lets somebody else answer first. The word for that state is the very next entry, la timidezza, so the two Italian nouns a reader needs are already side by side and the English cognate matches the wrong one of them. Both descend from Latin diffidere, to place no faith in something; Italian kept the faith withheld from others, while English turned it inwards until only self-doubt was left. So say « mistrust » or « wariness » for la diffidenza, and reach for timido or schivo wherever English says « diffident ».