Shipbuilding

Il bordo libero is « freeboard » word for word, and the first half of it is a word an English reader already owns. Behind both stands the Germanic bord, a plank, which Old English kept as bord and which Italian received from the same stock through French. From the plank came the side of a ship built of planks, and that is the sense Italian took and then widened: il bordo is the edge of the hull, then the edge of anything at all — il bordo del tavolo, il bordo della piscina, il bordo di un foglio — and a bordo is aboard. English kept the ship too, in « aboard », « overboard » and « on board », but it also kept the other plank, the one laid flat: a « board » you eat from, so « room and board », and a « board » you sit round to decide things, so the « board of directors ». Italian carried none of that furniture to sea. For the table it has la tavola and for the committee il consiglio, and il bordo never leaves the edge.