Travel and transport

Fifth on this list is il pullman, and an English reader will recognise the name at once and then put it on the wrong vehicle. George Mortimer Pullman was an American manufacturer who from 1867 built railway carriages fitted out for sleeping and dining, and the name settled on the carriage: in English a Pullman is a railway coach of that comfortable kind, and nothing else. Italian borrowed the word and let it leave the rails. Il pullman is the long-distance road coach, the one with reclining seats and a luggage hold underneath, and it is what stops in front of the station in the sentence beside this entry. What crossed over was the promise of a long journey taken sitting comfortably; the track it was first laid on stayed behind. Two practical points follow. The plural takes no ending at all, as borrowed words in Italian do not change: i pullman. And a town bus is not one of these — that is l’autobus, while the older country service between villages is la corriera.