Blame and responsibility in Italian

Implicare is one verb in Italian and two in English, and the choice between them decides whether a sentence accuses somebody or merely reasons. Latin implicare meant to fold a thing in, to entangle it. English received it twice: once early, through French, worn down to « imply », and once later, straight out of the books, as « implicate ». The learned form kept the entangling and is now almost entirely about people and wrongdoing — « the testimony implicates the shift supervisor ». The worn form kept the folding-in of sense and is about propositions — « the wording implies a reproach ». Italian never made that division. La testimonianza implica anche il capo turno puts a man into the file, while questo implica che il contratto decade is pure logic, and only the object tells the two apart; for the logical sense Italian also offers comportare. The same split runs through the nouns, since « an implication » is a consequence while « his implication in the fraud » is his involvement. One more branch is worth holding on to: the same Latin verb, through French, gave « employ ».