Pipeline engineering

The ninth entry is la perdita di spessore, and the second noun leads somewhere no inspection tool goes. Lo spessore is thickness, plainly: the wall of a pipe, a slice of bread, a sheet of steel, and misurare lo spessore is exactly what this list has measured from the inside. Then Italian lifts the word off the material and lays it on people and on work. Un politico di spessore is a politician of real weight; un romanzo di spessore is a novel with something in it; una persona di grande spessore umano is somebody of depth. Di spessore has hardened into a compliment, and the reproach is paid out in the same picture: un dibattito senza spessore is a debate with nothing behind the surface. English cannot follow, because « thickness » went the other way and settled on the head — call a person « thick » and you have called them stupid. So the compliment has to be paid with « substance », « depth » or « stature », and the one measurement is read by the two languages with opposite signs.