Learning systems

Il termine di paragone holds a word that English also owns and has put somewhere very strange. In Italian il paragone is the plainest word there is for a comparison: fare un paragone, to draw one; a paragone di, compared with; senza paragone, beyond compare. Its first job, though, was not abstract at all. La pietra di paragone is the touchstone, the dark stone a goldsmith rubs a piece of metal against so that the streak left behind can be set beside a streak of known worth. Comparison in that trade was a physical act, and the noun took its name from the stone. The word travelled into French and from there into English, and on the way it shed both the stone and the ordinary sense, keeping only the flattering end: a « paragon » is a thing so far past the others that it stands as the measure. The two words are therefore one word, and the Italian half is the half that stayed useful: what this list needs is the everyday sense, a figure to hold a result up against.