Idiomatic expressions

La question reste en suspens says that a matter has not been settled, and an English reader hears the wrong thing in it, because « suspense » is a state of nerves. Both words go back to Latin suspendere, to hang up, and both have kept the hanging; what differs is what is left hanging. French hangs the file. En suspens, with no final e and no article, is said of a question, a decision, a payment or a building site that nobody has closed: laisser un dossier en suspens, les travaux sont en suspens. English hangs the reader, and « suspense » is what a thriller does to the person holding it. The two meet in one corner only, and it belongs to the bookkeeper: a « suspense account » holds an entry that cannot yet be allocated, which is exactly the French sense. French, for its part, had to borrow the other reading back — the cliffhanger is le suspense, masculine and with the final e — so that one letter is all that keeps the thriller apart from the unfinished file.