Mechanical engineering and production

Seventh on this list is l’utensile da taglio, and the first of those three words is the one that goes wrong. English has « utensil », and it lives in a kitchen drawer: a wooden spoon, a whisk, a fish slice. Italian never narrowed the word that way. L’utensile is any implement used for working on something, and its home is the workshop rather than the kitchen. L’utensile da taglio is the tool that takes the metal off; il portautensile, two lines further down this page, is what holds it; and l’utensileria is the tool room where the whole set is kept and reground. The compound that matters most is la macchina utensile, the machine tool — not a machine with a utensil somewhere inside it, but a machine whose work is done by a tool it grips. Italian does keep the kitchen sense as well, gli utensili da cucina, yet that is one use among several rather than the whole of the word. So cambiare l’utensile, said on a shop floor, means changing the insert, and nobody is washing up.