Numismatics

The thirteenth entry is the only adjective on this list, and it is written in two words: non circolato. That is not a printer’s slip, and there is no single Italian word waiting to replace it. Where English builds a negative adjective by fixing a prefix to the front of the word — « uncirculated », « unsigned », « unpaid », « undeclared » — Italian keeps the negator loose and sets non before the past participle: non circolato, non firmato, non pagato, non dichiarato. The pattern is open, so any participle can be negated this way, and the two words never fuse into one. Italian does own a prefixed set as well, but it is closed and has to be learned item by item — invenduto, incompiuto, inedito — and a reader cannot manufacture new members of it. The safe direction of travel follows from that. Meeting an English word in « un- », reach for non plus the participle and the result will be Italian. Reaching instead for in- on your own authority is how a word that does not exist gets written into a catalogue.