Meetings and committees

The thirteenth entry is presiedere una discussione, and the Italian verb is the sober one: presiedere, from the Latin praesidere, to sit in front of. Everything Italian builds on it stays abstract — il presidente, la presidenza, presiedere una seduta — and nobody in the room is ever named after a seat. English did the opposite and turned the furniture itself into the office. « The chair » is the person running the meeting; the same word is the post — « she holds the chair », « a candidate for the chair » — and « to chair » is an ordinary transitive verb: « he chaired the committee for nine years ». The old formulas keep the wood in sight: a speaker « addresses the chair », a question is put « from the chair », and a call of « chair » asks the person sitting in it to step in. Two things follow for anybody writing minutes. « Chairman » is no longer the safe form, and « chair » is what an agenda prints. And la sedia will translate none of it: in Italian the seat stayed a seat.