Photography and composing the picture

Le viseur and « visor » look like one word wearing two spellings, and they name two different objects. Le viseur is what you put your eye to: the viewfinder of a camera, and the sight on a rifle. It is built on viser, to aim, which is one of the busiest verbs in the language — viser un poste is to be after a job, viser haut is to be ambitious, une critique qui vise le directeur is aimed squarely at him, and être visé is to be the person meant. « Visor » went the other way. It comes from the old word for the face, which French still keeps in la visière: the hinged front of a helmet, the peak of a cap, the shield a welder drops over his eyes. So lifting one’s visor is relever sa visière, never relever son viseur, which would be picking the camera back up. And the third member of the family closes the circle: the visor above a windscreen, the flap folded down against the sun, is le pare-soleil — the same word this list uses for a lens hood.