Dermatology

The thirty-second entry is l’ulcère, and the noun itself is safe: it is the ulcer of the leg, of the stomach, of the mouth, and nothing else. The trap is the verb standing behind it. Ulcérer began in medicine and then moved into feeling, and in everyday French that is now almost the only place it lives. Cette remarque l’a ulcéré describes no lesion whatever; it says the remark cut the man to the quick and that he has not forgiven it. Il est ulcéré par ce silence is somebody wounded in his pride and still smarting. An English reader who meets ulcéré and reaches for « ulcerated » writes a sentence that is grammatical and clinical, and the person described stops being furious and starts being ill — a mistake nothing in the surrounding words will flag. English kept this whole family on the body, with « an ulcer », « ulcerated » and « ulcerous », and says the other thing with « embittered », « cut to the quick » or « deeply offended ». The rule is short enough to keep: in this list the noun is medicine, and the participle almost never is.