Business and finance

Thirty-first in the list is la scorta, glossed here as the stock or the supply, and that is one of three jobs it holds down. The first is the one on this page: la scorta di carta è finita, the paper has run out, and a company counts le scorte di magazzino at the end of the year. The second belongs to the news. La scorta is the escort, the officers who travel with a judge or a minister, vivere sotto scorta is to live under guard, and the verb behind it is scortare. The third hides inside a preposition: di scorta means spare. La ruota di scorta is the spare wheel, le chiavi di scorta the spare keys, una batteria di scorta one kept in reserve. English spends three unrelated words on the three — « stock », « escort », « spare » — and hears no family in them at all. What the Italian keeps in view is a single idea underneath: something held alongside, out of the way, against the moment it is wanted.