Plastics technology

The eighth entry is le canal d’alimentation, the passage that carries the melt from the machine into the cavity, and word for word it gives something no moulder ever means: « the alimentary canal », which in English is the gut. The mismatch comes from what the two languages did with the Latin verb alere, to feed. French kept it in daily use. L’alimentation is food and diet, un magasin d’alimentation is a grocer’s shop, une alimentation équilibrée is a balanced diet — and the same noun does the work of electricity as well, since l’alimentation électrique is the supply and the box inside a computer is l’alimentation, what we call a power supply unit. English kept almost nothing of the verb: « alimentary », now shut inside one anatomical phrase, and « alimony », the maintenance one former spouse pays the other, which is the feeding root again, this time in a courtroom. So in a technical text read alimentation as « feed » or « supply » and keep the anatomy out: this entry is the feed channel, and couper l’alimentation is to cut the power.