Gym and training

The list of a gym membership. Two thirds of the way down is le rouleau de massage, the foam roller, and the first word in it belongs to a family English uses daily without hearing it. Le rouleau goes back to Latin rotulus, a little wheel, and from there to anything wound round one, which in practice meant a roll of paper. An actor was handed his part written on such a roll, so the part itself came to be called le rôle, and English borrowed that as « role ». But the same rotulus did one more job. A register kept as a check against another register was a contrarotulus, a counter-roll; French made le contrôle out of it, and English took that as « control ». So the word for steering a company, a machine or a temper began as a second roll of paper laid beside the first. Three ordinary English words — « roll », « role », « control » — and one piece of French gym equipment all turn on the same small wheel, and a reader who meets rouleau and thinks « roll » has the whole family at once.