Goldsmithing

Entry twenty-two is la pâte à polir, and the noun in front of the preposition sits calmly on top of five English ones. La pâte is anything soft worked into a mass, and French asks for no further distinction. It is the bread mixture, la pâte à pain, which we call « dough ». It is the thin mixture poured for pancakes, la pâte à crêpes, which is « batter » and never « dough ». It is what a tart is built from, la pâte brisée or la pâte feuilletée, which is « pastry ». It is the abrasive compound of this entry, which is « paste ». And in the plural it is dinner: les pâtes are « pasta », with no singular available for one piece of it. All the dividing is done on our side, and the direction of travel matters. Going into French the five fall together and nothing is lost; coming out of it the choice has to be made afresh every time, and only the sentence around the word can make it. A tin of pâte on a goldsmith’s bench is the one kind nobody could eat.