Verbs that replace a subordinate clause

The twelfth entry is districare, and it is worth taking apart rather than learning whole. Underneath it sits the Latin noun tricae, which named trifles, petty obstacles, the small entanglements that hold somebody up; on that noun Latin built intricare, to tangle something, and extricare, to work it free again. English borrowed both verbs and still uses them: « intricate » says literally that a thing is tangled, and « to extricate » is to pull something out of the tangle. Italian inherited the same pair, kept intricare and intricato unchanged, and rebuilt the second verb on a prefix of its own, so that where English has ex- it has dis-: districare. That history explains the sentence on this page better than any gloss can. Il giudice districa i due filoni dell’indagine does not say that the judge is explaining anything; it says that two threads had been wound round each other and that he is separating them again. « To clarify » would throw away the tangle, which is the whole picture. And when what is stuck is a person rather than a thread, Italian turns the verb round: districarsi is to get oneself out of a difficulty.