Building conservation

The thirty-third entry is la corniche, and English holds two words where French holds one. « A cornice » is the moulded ledge that crowns a wall and throws the rain clear of it, which is exactly what the example sentence describes. « A corniche » is a road cut into the side of a cliff, the sort that runs high above the sea, and an English reader meets it in travel writing and nowhere near a builder. The two are the same French noun, taken in at different dates and held apart by their spelling ever since. French never divided them. La corniche is the moulding on the façade; it is the narrow shelf of rock on a mountain face; and it is the coast road, une route en corniche, la Grande Corniche above Monaco. The thread running through the three is a narrow ledge along something much larger, and once that is seen they stop looking like a coincidence. So read la corniche by the company it keeps: beside la façade and le stuc it is the cornice, and beside la mer it is the road.