Laboratory medicine

The seventh entry is l’etichettatura, and the ending carries more information than the stem does. Italian has two live suffixes for turning a verb into the name of what that verb does, and this single page uses both. -atura names a handled operation, something a person performs on an object, and very often the trace it leaves behind: etichettare gives l’etichettatura, and away from this list saldare gives la saldatura, tarare gives la taratura, scottare gives la scottatura, which is both the scalding and the mark. -azione names a process regarded as a process, with nobody’s hands in it: la coagulazione, la sedimentazione, and la refertazione inside il tempo di refertazione, all three of them on this page. An English reader never has that choice to make. « -ing » does the whole job, and « -ation » arrives ready-built inside Latin loans rather than being made to order, so « labelling » and « clotting » look like one family while their Italian counterparts do not. The rule of thumb when reading a report: -atura points at somebody at a bench, -azione at something happening inside the tube.