Bookkeeping and the balance sheet

Halfway down this list is la dépréciation, and it is built on a price. Latin pretium meant what a thing was worth, and French has kept the whole family visibly together: le prix, apprécier — to put a value on something — and déprécier, to put a lower one on it, which is what the books do when stock is no longer worth what it cost. English received the same root twice and recognises it once. « Price » came through Old French pris, and so did « prize ». But the verb pretiare arrived as Old French preisier and became « praise » — so praising somebody is, at the bottom, pricing them, and a reader who has never set « price » beside « praise » has no reason to suspect the two of being one. That distance is also why English accounting does not reach for the family here at all: it writes « write-down » or « impairment », one word Germanic and one Latin, and leaves the price word to the shop. French kept it in the ledger, where la dépréciation says plainly what happened — a thing was re-priced downwards.