Psychiatry and the mental state in Italian

Halfway down this list sits l’agitazione, and the noun looks so much like « agitation » that a reader stops there. The trouble is not the noun but the family behind it. In English, « agitate » and « agitated » have narrowed almost entirely to people: somebody is agitated, a crowd is agitated, and outside the clinic the word survives mainly in politics, where an agitator stirs people up. Italian never narrowed it. Agitare is the plain physical verb for moving something to and fro: agitare la bottiglia is what the label tells you to do before pouring, agitare la mano is waving, and agitare le acque is making trouble. The past participle then does a job English hands to other words altogether: il mare è agitato is a rough sea, and una notte agitata is a broken night. So one Italian family answers in turn to « shake », « wave », « rough », « restless » and « agitated », and only the situation says which. Read l’agitazione here in its clinical sense, but do not carry that sense back out of the consulting room.