Competition law

The twenty-fourth entry is l’ispezione a sorpresa, and the two languages date the same morning differently. The Italian names the effect: the inspection is a sorpresa, sprung on a company that knew nothing, and the sentence on the list adds only when it starts, all’apertura degli uffici. English has the flat equivalent, « an unannounced inspection », and that is what the official texts print. What everybody actually says is « a dawn raid », and the phrase names the hour instead of the surprise. « A raid » began as a word for a swift mounted incursion — it is the same word as « road », in the old sense of riding out — and dawn is the hour at which such a thing was launched, before the other side was awake. Two cautions follow for anyone borrowing the idiom. It belongs to lawyers and journalists, and an authority never uses it of itself. And in the City it does a second job that has nothing to do with this list: « a dawn raid » is also a sudden sweep of shares bought the moment the market opens.