Amphibians and reptiles

The fourteenth entry is l’apertura della bocca, and it sits on a place where English has two words and Italian has one. « Gape » came in from Old Norse gapa, to open the mouth wide, and it brought « gap » along with it, the same root naming the hole instead of the act. « Aperture » arrived far later and off the page, straight from Latin apertura, and it never learned to describe an animal. So a herpetologist writing English measures the snake’s « gape » and would never call it an « aperture », while a photographer sets the « aperture » of a lens and would never call it a « gape ». The two are not overlapping synonyms; they are one idea that entered the language twice, once through the mouth and once through the study, and the language kept both by handing each a territory. Italian made no such division. L’apertura is the opening of a mouth, the opening of a lens, the opening of a shop and the opening of a concert, and the reader takes the territory from whatever stands beside it.