Leasing

The eighteenth entry is la gestione della flotta, and the word in the middle is one of the few on this page that English and Italian genuinely share. « Fleet » grew up at home: Old English had flēotan, to float or to swim, and from it flēot, a ship and then a company of ships. Italian inherited nothing of the sort, because Latin called a fleet classis; it took la flotta much later from French « flotte », and the French had taken that from the Norsemen, from floti, built on the same Germanic root for floating. The word therefore went north to south and came back as a loan, while ours simply stayed where it was. One practical consequence for this contract: la flotta is not tied to the sea. A firm’s vans and cars are la flotta aziendale, and la gestione della flotta is fleet management in the plainest office sense, with never a ship in sight.