Pets in French

Near the end of the list is la ration journalière, and the adjective inside it is a small trap for anybody working from English, where one word, « daily », does the whole job. French has two, and they divide the work by setting rather than by meaning. Quotidien is the ordinary one, the word of lived life: la vie quotidienne, le pain quotidien, au quotidien. Journalier belongs to measurement and to paperwork — la ration journalière, la dose journalière, la moyenne journalière, le tarif journalier. Either would be understood in the other one’s place, but each carries its setting with it: la vie journalière reads like a form somebody has to fill in, and la ration quotidienne quietly moves the feeding chart out of the surgery and into the kitchen. What settles the pair is what happens when each is used as a noun, because there they go in opposite directions. Le quotidien is everyday life itself: le quotidien d’un vétérinaire. Un journalier is a person — a labourer hired and paid by the day. One adjective turns into a life and the other into a worker, and « daily » turns into neither.