Politics and diplomacy

Twenty-first on the list is imporre la disciplina di voto, and the Italian says plainly what English says by way of a hunting field. Four transparent words: somebody imposes the discipline of the vote. Our word for the same thing is « whip », and it is a small vocabulary on its own. « The whip » is the member charged with keeping the others voting with the party — much of that work falls to il capogruppo in Italian — and « the whip » is also the written instruction sent out each week, so that « a three-line whip » is an order underlined three times and unmissable, while « a one-line whip » is barely a request. « To withdraw the whip » is to expel somebody from the parliamentary party. The word comes from the « whipper-in » of a fox hunt, the rider whose job was to stop the hounds straying off after ideas of their own. None of that travels. Italian has no noun for the person, no verb built on it and no picture underneath, so every one of those phrases has to be unpacked into a description.