Joinery and furniture making

The fifteenth entry is la piallatura, and the English word under it carries more traffic than anything else on this page. « A plane » is the tool, a body of wood or iron with a blade set at an angle, and the bench keeps a whole family of them: « a smoothing plane », « a block plane », « a jointer plane ». « To plane » is what the tool does, and « planing » is this entry. The same five letters then name an aircraft, shortened so long ago from « an aeroplane » that the short form is the only one anybody says. They name a flat surface in geometry, and from there a level of argument, « on a different plane ». And they name a broad-leaved tree planted along city streets. Italian lets none of those share a word. The tool is la pialla, the action piallare; the aircraft is l’aereo; the flat surface is il piano, which is also a storey and a plan; the tree is il platano. Four senses have to be sorted before a single one is translated, and only one of them ever reaches a workshop.