Law and the courts

Most of the courtroom words on this page reached English from Latin by way of French, and one of them made the journey the other way round. Il verdetto is a borrowing from English, taken into Italian in the nineteenth century, and « verdict » is itself Anglo-Norman verdit, from vere dictum, the thing truly said. So a reader of English owns this word already, and that is exactly the trap. In an English court the verdict is the jury’s finding on guilt, the judge’s decision is the « judgment », and the « sentence » is the punishment. An Italian court works with la sentenza: it is the whole decision, and, unlike the English word it resembles, it is never the punishment, which is la pena. Il verdetto has no place in the file at all. It lives in the newspaper, where it covers any awaited outcome — il verdetto delle urne, il verdetto del campo — and that is where a reader of Italian will actually meet it.