How a shoe is made

Il contrafforte is the stiffener sewn into the back of a shoe, the piece that keeps the heel in place, and the word reaches the workbench from two larger places. Its first home is architecture: a contrafforte is the pier built against a wall to take the outward thrust of a vault, and English calls that a « buttress ». Its second home is the map: i contrafforti dell’Appennino are the ridges that branch off the main chain and run down towards the plain, which English calls « spurs ». The shoemaker takes the same idea a third time, at the size of a hand. English has no single word for the three. It borrowed « buttress » from Old French, it kept « spur » from its own Germanic stock, and for the shoe it says « counter », which goes back to the same contra by a quite different road. So a reader who knows the cathedral will not recognise the mountain, and neither of them helps with the shoe, whereas an Italian mason, an Italian walker and an Italian shoemaker are all using one word and looking at one picture.