Car and garage

The list for the day the car stops being furniture. One word on it shows how differently the two languages build a name for a new machine. L’horodateur is the parking meter — the pillar you pay at and take a ticket from — and it is built out of what it does: horo- from the hour and dater from the date, a device that stamps a time. The same stem gives l’horodatage, the time-stamp on a file or a transaction, which is now a word in computing. English named the same pillar after the transaction instead — « pay and display » — or after the coin slot it used to be, « parking meter ». French builds these compounds readily and they stay transparent: un lave-vaisselle washes the dishes, un essuie-glace wipes the glass. Read the parts and you have the object, which is worth more here than any single translation.