Words for everything

None of these words means very much on its own, and all of them turn up constantly. A third of the way down is chez, which is the one preposition in this list with no English word behind it at all. It comes from the Latin for house, and it puts you inside somebody's sphere: chez moi is at my place, je vais chez le médecin is I am going to the doctor's, chez le boulanger is at the baker's. From there it moves off buildings altogether: chez les Romains means among the Romans, and chez Proust means in Proust's writing. English has to choose each time between « at », « to », « among » and « in the work of », and the possessive with nothing after it — « at the doctor's » — is the nearest thing it has to the same idea.