Semiconductor technology

The thirty-second entry is le courant de fuite, and the last noun does on its own a job English has to share out among several words. Une fuite is a leak, and the everyday sense is the plumber’s — une fuite d’eau, une fuite de gaz, and the current of this entry, which drains away where no wire was meant to carry it. But une fuite is equally a flight. La fuite du prisonnier is the escape, prendre la fuite is to make off, and a driver who does not stop is guilty of un délit de fuite. The verb keeps both halves too: le robinet fuit is the tap is dripping, and il a fui is he ran away. From there the word spreads. La fuite des capitaux is capital flight, la fuite des cerveaux is the brain drain, and la fuite en avant is the headlong rush forward that somebody chooses instead of facing the thing. English needs « leak », « escape », « flight » and « drain » for all that, and hears no family in them. French hears one idea throughout: something getting out that ought to have stayed in.