Diving

The fifteenth entry is la cintura dei pesi, and the first word opens a family that English owns in full and never recognises. Behind it lies cingere, to gird, to put a belt round something, and the noun cinctura, the belt itself. Italian kept the whole family in daily use: la cintura is the belt of a pair of trousers and of a car, la cinta muraria is the ring of walls round an old town, il recinto is a fenced enclosure, and cingere is still an ordinary verb — cingere d’assedio is to lay siege, that is, to put a ring round a place. English took the same words and shut every one of them in a book. « Cincture » survives as a vestment; « precinct » is what was girded in front, an enclosed ground and now a police district; and « succinct » is the best of the three, because sub plus cingere is girded up from below, a Roman with his tunic belted short so as to get on with the work. A succinct answer is not a brief one by accident: it is one with its clothes tucked in.