Mining law and raw materials in French

The last entry is le forage d’exploration, and the noun that carries it is the tidiest trap on this page, because the English word of the same shape belongs to another world. Le forage is drilling: the act of boring into rock and, by extension, the hole itself, so un forage is a borehole and la plateforme de forage a drilling rig. Behind it stands the verb forer, from Latin forare, to pierce — a root English also inherited, much further back, as « to bore ». « Forage » in English comes from somewhere else entirely: from Old French fourrage, straw and winter feed, built on a Germanic word that is likewise the ancestor of « fodder ». That is why « to forage » is to go looking for food or supplies and « forage crops » are grown for cattle. French keeps that branch as well, in le fourrage and fourrager, two letters away from the mining word and never confused with it by anybody who grew up with both. Read un forage as foraging and a drilling campaign turns into a hunt for hay.