Oncology

The eighth entry is l’esame estemporaneo, and the adjective is one an English reader will file in entirely the wrong room. « Extempore » and « extemporaneous » belong to the platform: a speech given without notes, a remark invented on the spot, and the word carries a faint promise that nothing was prepared. Italian keeps that sense too — un discorso estemporaneo is exactly an off-the-cuff speech, una battuta estemporanea a remark that came out of nowhere — but it also keeps the plain Latin one underneath, ex tempore, out of the moment, done there and then. That is what the pathology term means, and nothing about the procedure is improvised: the tissue is examined while the patient is still on the table and the surgeon is waiting for the answer before deciding how much to remove. The part worth keeping is what each language chose to put in the name. Italian names the moment, the answer that must come now. English names the method and calls it « a frozen section », after the freezing that makes a thin slice possible in minutes. One procedure, two names, not one idea in common.