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Near the end of this list stands tiepido, and it is one of those plain adjectives that costs an English speaker two words instead of one. L’acqua è ancora tiepida is an ordinary sentence about a tap. English reaches first for « lukewarm », and that word is a curiosity, because it says the same thing twice: « luke » is no name but a worn-down adjective of its own, the Middle English lewk, which already meant exactly this and nothing else, and « warm » was pushed in behind it once nobody understood the first half any more. The other candidate is « tepid », taken straight from Latin tepidus, and it has very nearly walked out of the bathroom. A reader meets « a tepid response », « tepid applause », « tepid reviews » far more often than tepid water, so choosing it for a tap sounds bookish. Tiepido carries both loads without changing shape. It is the everyday word for the temperature, and it is also un’accoglienza tiepida, a welcome with no warmth in it. One adjective there; a tautology and a metaphor here.