Smell and taste

The fourteenth entry is acre, and it is the one word here an English reader will misread with complete confidence. In Italian it is an adjective, and it describes a smell or a taste that bites: the smoke off a dead fire, a harsh wine, something chemical catching at the back of the throat. It comes from the Latin acer, keen or sharp-edged. The English « acre » is a noun, it measures a piece of land, and it has nothing whatever to do with that Latin word. It arrived through Old English æcer, an open field, and the Latin word it is properly related to is ager, the field that gives « agriculture ». Two families, two meanings, one spelling. What English does hold from acer is « acrid », and that is the translation wanted here, carrying the same rasp: acrid smoke, an acrid smell. So un fumo acre is acrid smoke and never an acre of anything. Beside it on this page sits pungente, which pricks the nose rather than burning it.