Offices and paperwork

The list for a morning at a counter. English has le cachet as a loanword and took exactly one of its senses, and not the one on this page. In English « a certain cachet » is prestige, a mark of distinction — an abstract noun about reputation. At a French counter le cachet is the rubber stamp and the ink mark it leaves: il manque le cachet de la mairie means the town hall has not stamped it, and the form goes back. The word is the old French for a seal, and the prestige sense grew out of the mark a maker pressed into his work. Two further senses are worth having, because both are everyday: un cachet d’aspirine is a tablet, and le cachet d’un artiste is the fee. The English for the thing on this page is « the stamp » — which in French is le timbre, but that one goes on the envelope.