Appointments and arrangements

A fifth of the way down the list is tenere aggiornato, and the verb inside it is worth taking apart. Aggiornare is a- plus giorno, the day, plus a verb ending: to bring a thing to the day. English owns the very same construction. « Adjourn » came from Old French ajorner, itself a plus jorn, the day, out of Latin diurnum; it entered English in the fourteenth century meaning to appoint a day for something, and then settled on putting that something off to the day appointed. Italian kept the old sense in its formal register, and la seduta è aggiornata a domani is what a chairman says. But the everyday Italian sense went the other way entirely: aggiornare is to update. Aggiornare i dati, aggiornare il software, and ti tengo aggiornato, which is what a friend promises. The same two pieces, then, produced a verb for pushing a date away and a verb for pulling a thing level with today. A reader who hears « adjourn » inside ti tengo aggiornato has the promise exactly backwards.