Infectious diseases in Italian

The tenth entry is la soppressione virale, and the noun carries a weight in Italian that « suppression » does not carry in English. Both descend from the Latin supprimere, to press down, and in the clinic the two line up exactly: the virus is held down until it can no longer be measured. Everywhere else they part company. Sopprimere is the ordinary Italian verb for doing away with a thing altogether. A railway drops a service and the board reads treno soppresso; a ministry abolishes an office and the decree says l’ufficio è stato soppresso; a vet ends the life of an animal and the phrase is sopprimere un animale. None of those is « to suppress » in English, which needs « cancelled », « abolished » and « put down » in turn. The practical consequence is worth fixing: la soppressione standing alone, without virale beside it, does not suggest control at all. It suggests that something has been removed from the world, and that is how an Italian reader hears it until the second word arrives.