Radiology in Italian

The eighth entry is il riscontro occasionale, and it is the second word that costs a reader something. In English, « occasional » is a word about frequency: an occasional headache is one that comes back now and then, and an occasional table is the one pulled out only when there is company. Both languages took the adjective from occasio, the chance happening, and each kept a different half of it. Italian kept the chance. Occasionale therefore says nothing whatever about how often something happens; it says that whatever happened was neither planned nor looked for. Un incontro occasionale is a chance meeting, un lavoro occasionale is casual work taken as it comes, and il riscontro occasionale of this list is the thing nobody was hunting for, turned up by a scan requested for something else entirely. English radiology has its own settled name for that, « the incidental finding », and it is the only safe rendering. Reading occasionale as « occasional » turns one unsought discovery into something that keeps recurring, which is a different report about a different patient.