Cardiology

The twenty-seventh entry is l’ablation, and on this page the two words mean the same thing, which is exactly why they are worth prising apart. Here l’ablation is the catheter procedure that destroys the patch of tissue setting off the arrhythmia, and English calls that « ablation » as well. Step off this page in French and the word widens at once. L’ablation is the ordinary written noun for taking anything out: l’ablation de la vésicule biliaire, l’ablation d’un rein, l’ablation d’une tumeur, every one of them an operation with a scalpel and a specimen jar. English went the other way and narrowed « ablation » to destruction in place — by heat, by cold, by current, with nothing carried out of the room — as in catheter ablation and endometrial ablation. When an organ does leave the body, English says removal, excision or resection, or reaches for an « ectomy »: nephrectomy, cholecystectomy. So l’ablation du rein is a nephrectomy, and reading it as renal ablation quietly swaps a scalpel for a needle. Outside medicine the two words do still meet, on a glacier, where each names the mass a season takes off.