Energy law and the grid

The sixth entry is le raccordement au réseau, and the noun is where an English reader is likeliest to go wrong, because « connection » does on its own the work of four separate French words. Raccorder is to join two things end to end so that something can pass through — a pipe, a cable, a track — and le raccordement is that joining, which is why the works that bring a building onto the grid carry this name and no other. Brancher is to hook a thing up to a supply that is already there: you branchez a lamp, and le branchement is the short run of cable from the main in the street to the meter. Relier joins two places that both stay where they are, so an island is reliée to the mainland. Connecter is the youngest of the four and keeps close to electronics and data. English picks one word and lets the sentence explain it; French picks the word that has already said what kind of joining it is, so a report writing la connexion au réseau for these works sounds like somebody logging in.