Opinion and discussion

The twentieth entry is confrontare, and it is a false friend with a visible cause. It and English « confront » are the same compound: cum, together, on frons, frontis, the forehead, so that the picture underneath both is two faces brought level with each other. Italian read that picture as a measurement. Hold two things side by side with their fronts in line and you can see which is longer, dearer or better, so confrontare is simply to compare — vale la pena confrontare i prezzi is advice about shopping and contains no quarrel at all, and il confronto is the comparison itself. English read the same picture as a challenge. To confront somebody is to stand in their path, « a confrontation » is at best a row, and the cooler sense survives only in the stiff passive « to be confronted with », where what is faced is a fact rather than a person. The safe rule is therefore not to carry the verb across at all: confrontare is « compare », and English « confront » comes back into Italian as affrontare.