Translating and interpreting

The thirty-sixth entry is artificioso, and it is the one adjective on this page that an English reader will almost certainly misread. The shape of the word says « artificial », and « artificial » in English is a neutral description: an artificial lake, an artificial sweetener, something made rather than grown. That sense belongs to a different Italian word, artificiale, and the two are not interchangeable. Artificioso keeps the older meaning of artificium, a piece of contrivance, and it is always a reproach: a sentence arranged too carefully, a word order that somebody has bent into place. So un ordine delle parole artificioso does not say that the word order is man-made — every word order is — but that the effort shows through it. « Contrived » or « laboured » catch it; « artificial » does not, and would even read as praise of a machine. The distinction earns its place here because the neighbouring entries, legnoso and idiomatico, are verdicts of the same family, and a reviser who writes artificioso in the margin has said something quite precise about the sentence beside it.