Volcanology

The seventh entry is effusivo, and it is the false friend on this page that will not announce itself, because both languages took the word from the same Latin verb and then put it to opposite work. Effundere meant to pour out. Italian kept the pouring literal: un’eruzione effusiva is one in which the lava simply runs out of the ground, steadily, without a blast, and the adjective belongs to geology and to almost nothing else. English took the same word and pointed it at people. An « effusive » welcome is a loud one, all warmth and too many words, and « effusiveness » names a manner rather than a mechanism. So the two adjectives now sit at opposite ends of the scale this list is built on. What Italian calls effusivo is the calm eruption, the one that gives a town time to move, while an English reader meeting the word expects something gushing. Italian does have the human sense, but it has parked it in a noun the adjective never reaches: le effusioni are displays of affection. Keep effusivo for rock and le effusioni for people, and the trap closes on somebody else.