Inferences and fallacies

The thirtieth entry is cogente, and in the sentence beside it — l’argomento è cogente — our « cogent » fits without a seam. That agreement is the trap, because it holds for exactly one kind of subject. In English « cogent » can be said only of reasoning: a cogent argument, a cogent case, cogent evidence. Ask what else compels, and the word stops. Italian does not stop. Both words descend from the Latin cogere, to drive together, to force, and Italian kept the forcing where the law put it. Una norma cogente is a rule nobody may contract out of, il diritto cogente is the body of such rules, un termine cogente is a deadline that binds. None of that is « cogent ». A reader who renders norma cogente as a cogent rule has written something that sounds like praise for a well-argued regulation, where the original says only that it is mandatory. The English for that half of the word is « binding », « mandatory », or, in the phrase the lawyers carried over from Latin, « peremptory ». So read cogente twice: once for what compels, and once for whom.