Words without a subject IV

The forty-first entry is anódino, in o comentário era anódino, and an English reader who reaches for « anodyne » lands close enough — but the word carries a history the gloss hides. It is Greek: an-, without, and odýnē, pain. An anodyne was a thing that took pain away, and for three centuries « anodyne » was a noun belonging to the pharmacy, the name of a draught given to quieten an aching patient. The adjective followed the noun and then drifted. Something anodyne no longer removes pain; it simply causes none. That is where the two languages now stand side by side, since um comentário anódino and « an anodyne remark » both describe a sentence that could offend nobody. The weighting, though, is not the same. In English the word has turned faintly disapproving: call a report anodyne and you have said it was written in order to avoid saying anything. Anódino is flatter and more neutral, nearer to « harmless » or « of no consequence », and it can be plain description. The pain has gone from both; only one of them picked up a sneer on the way out.