Cosmetic chemistry in French

The twenty-first entry is l’interdiction des essais sur animaux, and the first noun is the kind of false friend that produces a sentence nobody will call wrong and nobody would ever write. In French une interdiction is the plain, daily word for a ban. It is printed on walls — interdiction de fumer, interdiction de stationner — it is handed down by a court as une interdiction de séjour, and it is taken away again with lever une interdiction. English owns the same word and has put it almost entirely out of ordinary reach. « Interdiction » now lives with the armed forces and the customs service, where it names the business of cutting a supply line or stopping a shipment at sea, and in Scots law it names a court order. What it does not mean is a ban. So this entry is « the animal testing ban », interdiction de fumer is « no smoking », and lever une interdiction is « to lift a ban ». The verb is the same trap one step on: interdire is simply to forbid, while « to interdict » is what a frigate does.