Abstract concepts

Notable is spelled exactly like the English word and does a different job — the sort of pair that never announces itself. In English, « notable » is about attention: a notable achievement is one worth remarking on, a notable figure is somebody people have heard of, and the word says nothing about size. The French adjective says only that. Une hausse notable is a rise big enough to matter — sizeable, appreciable, worth putting in the report because of its magnitude and not because anybody found it interesting. So une différence notable entre les deux comptes reports that the gap is wide, and un retard notable that the delay was long; neither calls the thing remarkable. Translate notable as « notable » and a measurement quietly turns into a compliment. Going the other way is worse, because French has ready words for the English sense and this is not one of them: a notable achievement is remarquable, a notable figure is une personnalité. One noun does keep an older shared sense: un notable is a local worthy, the person of standing in a small town, and the plural les notables sits closer to « the great and the good » than to anything measured.