Doing something

Two thirds of the way down sits spremere, to squeeze, and it is the same verb an English speaker reaches for whenever a thought is put into words. Behind both stands Latin exprimere, built from ex-, out, and premere, to press: to press one thing out of another. Italian kept the literal job and left it in the kitchen. Spremere un limone is to squeeze a lemon, una spremuta d’arancia is what comes out of it, and spremere una spugna is what you do to a wet sponge. English took the same verb through Old French and kept only the figure: to « express » an opinion is to press it out of yourself, an « expression » is the thing that came out, and « expressive » describes a face that lets a great deal through. The physical sense survives here only in technical corners, where a liquid may be « expressed » from a tissue, so the kitchen word had to come from elsewhere, and « to squeeze » is Germanic. Lemon and sentence are one gesture, and only one of the two languages still hears it.