Pets

Two thirds of the way down the list stands la dimensione della gabbia, and the noun inside it is one an English reader already owns twice without noticing. La gabbia comes from Latin cavea, an enclosure for animals, itself built on cavus, hollow. That same cavea travelled through Old French into English and became « a cage ». The diminutive caveola, a little cage, made the crossing twice: by the Norman road it gave « gaol », by the road from Paris it gave « jail », and the two are one word in two spellings, which is why British statutes went on printing « gaol » long after nobody pronounced it any way but the other. A hutch and a prison sentence therefore rest on the same Latin noun, one of them shrunk. Italian kept only the plain form and let it spread instead: la gabbia is the hutch, the aviary and the lift shaft, and la gabbia toracica is the rib cage, which is the same picture English makes. For the prison Italian uses a word of its own, il carcere.