Waste water treatment

The twenty-second entry is le bassin d’orage, and the first noun runs further in French than our own « basin » does, although the two are the same word. Where they agree, they agree exactly. Un bassin is the ornamental pool in a park, the pond at the bottom of a garden, the bowl of water on a stand, and the ground a river drains: le bassin versant is a catchment, le bassin parisien is the Paris Basin, le bassin houiller is a coalfield, and « basin » carries every one of those without complaint. Two rooms in the French word are shut to us. The first is the harbour, where le bassin à flot is a wet dock and le bassin de radoub a dry dock, and nobody writing English calls either a basin. The second is the body, where le bassin is the ring of bone at the base of the spine, so that une fracture du bassin is a fractured pelvis. A stormwater tank, a dry dock and a hipbone, filed under one noun.