At the dentist

Two entries on this list have quietly swapped places, and both of them look like words a reader already owns. Il bite is one of them. Italian borrowed the noun whole, kept the English pronunciation, and made it invariable, so it is un bite and due bite. What it did not borrow was the meaning. Il bite is the object — the moulded guard worn at night against grinding — and no dentist in Britain calls that thing « a bite ». They call it « a night guard », « a bite guard » or « an occlusal splint ». Meanwhile « the bite » in English is the way the upper and lower teeth meet, and that is the other entry on this page: l’occlusione. So the pair crosses over. « Your bite has changed » is la tua occlusione è cambiata, never il tuo bite, and porta il bite di notte is « he wears a night guard at night ». The lesson is worth more than the one word: a noun borrowed from English can arrive attached to a single object and leave the rest of its meaning at home.