Old age and care

Il rischio di caduta uses la caduta in its plainest sense, and there the two languages agree: somebody goes down. The verb underneath it, cadere, then walks off into a set of fixed expressions that « to fall » cannot follow. Cadere dalle nuvole is to be completely taken aback by a piece of news — not to be dreamy, which is what the picture suggests to an English ear, but to have had no idea at all. Cadere a fagiolo is said of something that arrives at exactly the right moment, and the bean in it has never been explained to anybody’s satisfaction. È caduta la linea is what you say when a call cuts out, where English drops the line rather than letting it fall. And mi cadono le braccia is what somebody says when a piece of bad news has taken the heart out of them: in Italian it is the arms that fall, and in English it is the heart that sinks. Only one member of the family travels intact: cadere in piedi is to land on one’s feet, in the same figurative sense and with the same cat standing behind it.