Cosmetic chemistry

The fourth entry is il sistema conservante, and the noun inside it is the one an English speaker is likeliest to get wrong on a label. In Italian a preservative — the thing that keeps an opened jar from spoiling — is il conservante, plural i conservanti, and it is the same word printed on a packet of biscuits. The word an English ear reaches for instead, il preservativo, is a condom, and in ordinary speech nothing else at all. The trap is not an accident of sound. Both words go back to Latin praeservare, to keep safe beforehand, and each language then chose what was worth keeping safe: English settled on the contents of a tin, while Italian, like French and Spanish, settled on the body. Two things follow for anyone reading a pot. The claim to look for is senza conservanti, never anything built on the other word. And the verb underneath is perfectly innocent: conservare is simply to keep, as in conservare in frigorifero.