Forest and timber

The seventeenth entry is la fruttificazione del faggio, four Italian words for the year in which the beeches drop their nuts in quantity. English does it in one syllable, and hardly anybody knows what the syllable is. « Beech mast » is the crop itself, « a mast year » is the year it happens, and « masting » is what the trees are doing. The word is not the pole on a ship. That is a separate English word which merely fell into the same shape, and the two have never had anything to do with each other. This one is Old English mæst, the acorns and beechnuts on which swine were fattened in the autumn woods, and its nearest living relative is not nautical at all: it is the German mästen, to fatten, which is why the German name for this very entry is Buchenmast. So English has the shorter word and the looser grip on it, while the Italian phrase says the thing outright — the beech is fruiting. Read fruttificazione as the plain description it is, and keep « mast » for the pigs it was made for.