Cycling in Italian

The sixteenth entry looks like the dullest object on the page and hides a pair. The pompa of la pompa da bicicletta is the machine, and « a pump » translates it exactly. But Italian has a second pompa, unrelated to the first, which English also owns and spells differently: « pomp », meaning splendour and ceremony, from Greek pompḗ, a solemn procession, by way of Latin pompa. That second word is alive in ordinary Italian where ours has almost died. In pompa magna means with full ceremony and is nearly always said with a raised eyebrow. Le pompe funebri is the undertaker’s — the firm, the trade and the sign over the shopfront — the funeral procession having given its name to the whole business. So le pompe read on a street in Italian is hardly ever a row of pumps. English is safe here only because its spelling forked early: « pump » and « pomp » cannot be confused on paper. Italian lets one form carry both and leaves the sentence to decide which is meant.