Jan Leon Katlev (†2013)

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Notes

¹ 2nd section, page 7

² The following is not a literal translation, but a rather close rendering of Jan's original Danish. Meanings of Italian words are taken from the Cambridge-Signorelli Italian-English dictionary (© 1985) rather than translated from the Danish.

³ Jan probably thought of English and French here. The entry Express in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is very instructive: “E. train orig. =  ‘special train’, later, a passenger train running expressly to one particular place; now a fast train stopping only at important stations. Hence E. speed. E. delivery: (in the Postal service) immediate delivery by special messenger.” – The article exprès in Baumgartner and Ménard (1996) draws up the history of Latin expressus into French very clearly (« Le sens etym. de ‘ clair, explicite ’ a été remplacé par celui de ‘ chargé spécialement de transmettre la volonté de qqn ’, d'où le sens de ‘ spécial et rapide ’ (courrier exprès) qui existe depuis le xvii^e s. ») and acknowledges s.v. express 1 its English source « express (train) ‘ train spécial, train rapide ’», while suggesting for express 2 a connection with coffee being pressed through a percolator as quoted above.

⁴ The only thing to add to Jan's points is that Italian restaurants take pride in serving piatti espressi, dishes prepared on order and not cooked beforehand and kept warm.