Building services

The seventeenth entry is le rafraîchissement nocturne, and the noun in front of the adjective is a false friend with a very short fuse. In building services le rafraîchissement is cooling, and cooling of a mild kind: not the compressor work that French calls la climatisation, but the gentler lowering of a temperature — night air let through a house, a slab cooled by water, a room brought down two degrees. Rafraîchir une pièce is to cool a room, and the same verb tidies a memory or a coat of paint, rafraîchir la mémoire. The nearest English word has kept the trolley instead. Refreshments are served at an interval, and « refreshment » in the singular is food and drink, or at most the lift that a rest gives. Write « night refreshment » for this entry and the building has been offered a cold buffet. The term here is « night cooling », or « night purge » where the air is deliberately driven through. French does own the social sense too, since prendre un rafraîchissement is to have a cold drink, so the word carries both jobs and the page it stands on decides.