Purchasing and procurement

« Furniture » is la fourniture, borrowed whole and then quietly moved house. English took the noun from French in the sixteenth century, while it still meant the act of supplying and the things supplied, and then narrowed it to the tables and chairs inside a room. French never followed. L’étendue de la fourniture is the scope of supply, un contrat de fourniture a supply contract, les fournitures de bureau office stationery, and les fournitures scolaires the pencils and exercise books a child carries to school in September. For the tables and chairs French says les meubles or le mobilier, and a furnished flat is un appartement meublé. The older sense has not vanished from English either; it survives in the verb. « To furnish evidence », « to furnish a guarantee », « the figures furnished by the supplier »: there the word still means to supply, which is what the French noun does all day long. So read la fourniture through « furnish » rather than through « furniture », and le fournisseur and the verb fournir fall into place beside it.