Gastroenterology

The second entry is la préparation colique, and the adjective closing it is the one word on this page an English reader renders wrongly while feeling perfectly safe. Used as an adjective, colique means of the colon and nothing else. La muqueuse colique is the lining of the colon, une lésion colique sits in the colon, and la préparation colique is what empties it before an endoscopy. The English word that looks ready for that job is not. « Colic » here is a noun and a complaint — the crying baby, the horse that will not settle, the doubled-up pain of renal colic — so « colic preparation » would read as something given for cramp. The adjective English wants is « colonic », and the settled term for this entry is plainer still, « bowel preparation ». Worth holding on to the other half as well. French keeps the noun la colique for the cramp, and in everyday speech avoir la colique means diarrhoea. One spelling, therefore, is an organ in French grammar and a gripe in English, and only the part of speech says which.