Light, colour, surface

La superficie untuosa non prende il colore is a sentence about a wall, and the adjective inside it is one that English can no longer render with its own cognate. Untuoso in Italian is physical before it is anything else: a greasy surface, greasy hair, a sauce that coats the spoon. The figurative use does exist — un tono untuoso is the voice of somebody laying the charm on thick — but it arrives second, after the grease. « Unctuous » has gone the other way and given up the first sense almost entirely: outside a wine note or a cookery book it now describes a manner and nothing else, and always with disapproval. A decorator who reads la superficie untuosa as an unctuous surface has turned a wall into a flatterer. The family behind the word is still in daily view on the Italian side and hidden on the English one. Unguere, to anoint, gave ungere, which is what you do to a baking tin, and l’unto, the grease itself; English kept only the learned cousins, « unguent », « unction » and « ointment ».