Ceramics and pottery in Italian

Foggiare al tornio and tornire il fondo are two stages of one job, and Italian names them both from the same machine: il tornio, the lathe, which serves the potter and the wood turner alike, and tornire, to work a piece on it. English uses two verbs that look unrelated. The wet clay is « thrown » on the wheel; the leather-hard foot is « turned » on it the next day. The first is the surprise, because nothing is being hurled. « Throw » goes back to Old English thrawan, to twist or to turn, the same root that gives modern German drehen; hurling is the later sense, and the potter simply kept the older one that everybody else let go. So the English pair says twist and turn, which is what tornire says as well, and only one of the two still looks it. The practical point for this list: foggiare al tornio is « to throw », never « to shape at the lathe », and tornire il fondo is « to turn the foot », never « to sand it down ».