University and research

Near the end of the list stands il patrimonio della fondazione, and the noun is worth taking apart, because English owns its twin without ever noticing the family. Latin made patrimonium out of pater, the father, and the suffix -monium, which turns a person into the condition or the office attached to that person. Patrimonium was therefore what came down from a father: the estate. On exactly the same pattern Latin made matrimonium out of mater, the mother — not a mother’s property but her state, motherhood, and from there the ceremony that brings it about. Italian uses both every day and keeps them plainly alike: il patrimonio is anybody’s assets, a company’s net worth, a foundation’s endowment, while il matrimonio is a marriage. English borrowed the two and then separated them. « Matrimony » went to the registry office and stayed common; « patrimony » drifted into the rare and the literary, so that a reader who meets il patrimonio reaches straight for « assets » and never hears the father standing inside the word.