Noise control and acoustics

The fourth entry is il coefficiente di assorbimento, and the second noun carries a sound change worth far more than the single word it explains. Latin absorbere meant to swallow up, and the consonant pair in the middle of it did not survive the journey into Italian: the b was pulled into the s behind it, and the verb came out as assorbire, with l’assorbimento made from it. The same thing happened wherever that pair stood. Absentem gave assente and l’assenza; absurdum gave assurdo; absolvere gave assolvere and absolutum gave assoluto; obsessionem gave l’ossessione. English met all of these on paper instead, through French and the schoolroom, and kept the b in every one of them: « absorb », « absent », « absurd », « absolve », « absolute », « obsession ». What falls out of this is a reading rule that costs nothing. An Italian technical word opening in ass- is very often the English word opening in « abs- », and the guess is right far more often than it is wrong.