Giving and taking criticism

The ninth entry is dare atto di, glossed here as to acknowledge, and the gloss is correct without being enough. Italian keeps three fixed expressions on the noun l’atto, and a reader who meets them one at a time will take them for the same phrase with the verb swapped. They are not. Dare atto a qualcuno di qualcosa is warm: it hands somebody the credit, it says aloud that the work was done. That is the sentence on this page — le ha dato atto del lavoro fatto finora, where le is the person credited and del lavoro is what she is credited with. Prendere atto di qualcosa is cold. It registers a fact and withholds everything else, which makes it the formula of the side that has lost the argument: prendiamo atto della decisione concedes nothing beyond the decision’s existence. And fare atto di is a third thing altogether, with no feeling in it: fece atto di alzarsi is he made as if to stand. « Acknowledge » covers the first two and hides the difference in temperature, so English has to choose between « give credit for » and « take note of ».