Lift technology

The twelfth entry is a carga nominal, and the adjective inside it is a trap that never announces itself, because English owns the same word and has quietly moved it. In Portuguese nominal names the figure the maker guarantees: a carga nominal is the weight the lift is built and certified to carry, and going over it is why the car refuses to start. « Nominal » in everyday English has drifted the other way. It means in name only, and usually it means too small to matter: « a nominal fee », « a nominal sum », « nominal independence ». Engineering kept a second sense, and that one is no safer, because there a nominal size is the label rather than the measurement — « a nominal fifty-millimetre pipe » is not fifty millimetres across. Neither reading is what the plate in a lift says. The word that carries the guarantee in English is « rated »: « the rated load », « the rated speed ». So a carga nominal is the rated load, and « the nominal load » would tell a reader the number is approximate, the one thing it is not.