Credit and interest

The ninth entry is la garanzia reale, and the adjective inside it is not the one an English reader reaches for. Reale here has nothing to do with what is true or genuine. It is the Latin realis, built on res, a thing, and una garanzia reale is security that bites on a thing — a flat, a warehouse, a machine — as against una garanzia personale, which bites only on somebody’s promise and whatever that somebody happens to own. English keeps the very same word in the very same sense, and almost nobody notices: « real estate » and « real property » are not genuine estate or honest property, they are property made of things, of land, and the older law still divides « real » from « personal » exactly where Italian divides reale from personale. So a reader who already owns the phrase « real estate » already owns this entry. The trap runs the other way. Il valore reale and in tempo reale use the everyday sense, and only the noun standing beside the adjective says which of the two reale is on duty.