Science communication

The fourteenth entry is la spiegazione preventiva, and the English word for it, « prebunking », is the youngest member of a family that began with a place on a map. In 1820 a congressman whose district took in Buncombe County, North Carolina, held the floor with a speech nobody wanted, and explained that he was making it not for the House but « for Buncombe ». The county name became a common noun, then the spelling « bunkum », and then the short « bunk » — talk produced for show, with nothing inside it. In the 1920s « bunk » was given a verb, « to debunk », which is to take the nothing out of something that had been passed off as full. « Prebunking » is that verb moved one step earlier: the trick is shown before it is played, which is exactly what this entry names. Italian has no such family and describes the act instead — sfatare un mito for the belief already held, smentire in anticipo for the one still on its way. One language kept a county, the other kept a verb.