History and sources

Halfway down this list is le vestige, and the English word that looks like it has almost no overlap with it. In French, un vestige is something you can walk up to and touch: les vestiges d’un mur, les vestiges romains de la ville, what an excavation actually uncovers and leaves standing. It is the ordinary word of a museum label and of an archaeological report. English « vestige » went the other way and turned abstract. It survives above all in the negative — « not a vestige of proof », « not a vestige of doubt » — and where it is positive it means a faint survival of something that has otherwise gone: « vestiges of an older order ». Nobody writes « the Roman vestiges » of a town; there English says « remains », « ruins » or « remnants ». So the two words agree on the idea of what is left over and disagree completely about weight: the French one is solid and countable, the English one is thin and usually about to disappear. Reading « vestige » into a report on the fouilles turns standing walls into a rumour.