Safety and emergencies

The twenty-ninth entry is prudente, and the trap is not the meaning but the company the word keeps. English owns « prudent » — the same Latin adjective prudens, the same sense of looking ahead before acting — and has quietly confined it to money and policy. A prudent investor, prudent accounting, a prudent course of action: the word belongs to boardrooms and annual reports, and nobody has ever said it to a child going out of the door. Italian put it exactly there. Sii prudente is what a parent says on the doorstep, guida prudente is what is said to somebody taking the car, and un automobilista prudente is an ordinary careful driver and not a cautious investor. The noun travels with it: an Italian road sign reads procedere con prudenza, where the English one says « drive with care ». So sii prudente sulla strada, the sentence on this page, is not « be prudent on the road » — a phrase that parses, means something, and is said by nobody. It is « be careful on the road », and the everyday English word for it shares no root with the Italian at all.