Insurance and provision

Twenty-seventh on this list is l’appendice, and the English word that answers to it, « appendix », does the opposite job. An appendix is material added at the end of a document and left outside the argument: the tables at the back of a report, the schedules at the back of a lease. It never alters what came before it. Un’appendice di polizza is not an addition of that kind at all. It is a short separate paper that amends the policy itself — a new address, a raised sum insured, one car swapped for another — and once signed it overrides the wording it touches. The list gives it exactly: un’appendice cambia due righe del contratto. English insurance has its own name for this, « endorsement », and a reader who takes appendice for an appendix will file the thing instead of acting on it. One further trap, and it is grammatical: the Italian noun is feminine, so it is un’appendice with an apostrophe and le appendici in the plural.