Ageing as a field of research

The thirtieth entry is l’entrée en établissement, and the noun that closes it is one an English reader recognises at once and then puts in the wrong room. « The establishment » in English is the settled order of things, the people who run the country and are comfortable doing it; and « an establishment », with a faintly official ring to it, is a place of business — « a drinking establishment », « a catering establishment ». Un établissement in French carries none of that. It is the ordinary administrative word for a body that receives people and answers for them, and the field is almost always named beside it: un établissement scolaire is a school, un établissement de santé a hospital, un établissement pénitentiaire a prison, and in a file about old age, standing on its own, it is the care home. The verb explains the noun. Établir is to set a thing firmly in place, so un établissement is something that has been set up, and not a class of people who were there already. Read this entry as an entry into « the establishment » and a removal van turns into politics.