Ear, nose and throat medicine

The twenty-sixth entry is l’enrouement, and the sentence a French speaker actually reaches for when a voice gives way puts a different animal in the throat. English says there is a « frog » in there. French says avoir un chat dans la gorge, a cat, and the two pictures never swap: avoir une grenouille dans la gorge means nothing to anybody. The idiom is for the passing thing — the tickle, the croak, the pause before somebody clears his throat and starts again — and it belongs to conversation rather than to medicine. The entry itself is the condition, and that is what goes into a letter to a specialist: l’enrouement, with être enroué and une voix enrouée beside it. Three neighbours are worth keeping with the cat. Avoir la voix cassée is a voice worn right through after a night of shouting. Une extinction de voix is the complete loss, where English says somebody has lost his voice. And s’égosiller, built on le gosier, the gullet, is to shout oneself « hoarse ». Say the cat across a table and the entry in the notes.