Glassmaking

The thirteenth entry is la resistenza allo shock termico, and it shows the one habit that makes English technical prose look so unlike Italian. Italian names the thing first and hangs the rest on it with prepositions: la resistenza, and then what sort of resistance, allo shock, and then what sort of shock, termico. Read from left to right and the sense is complete at every step. English turns the whole thing round and throws the prepositions away: « thermal shock resistance ». The head is the last word, « resistance »; everything in front of it is a modifier, and the modifiers come in the order Italian uses only if you read them backwards. Two things follow. A reader meeting such a phrase cannot tell what it is about until the end, which is why a long stack like « edge seal failure rate » has to be unwound from the right. And a noun used as a modifier stays singular: it is « thermal shock resistance », never « thermal shocks resistance », however many the glass has survived.