Air pollution control

The ninth entry is le jour de dépassement, and the noun in the middle of it does four jobs that English hands to four different words. On a road it is overtaking, so un dépassement dangereux is a dangerous piece of overtaking and the sign that forbids it reads défense de dépasser. In a monitoring report it is what this entry means, the crossing of a limit value, and English has to reach for « exceedance », a word almost nobody uses anywhere else. In an office it is money: un dépassement de budget is an overrun, and un dépassement d’honoraires is the part of a French doctor’s fee charged above the scale the state reimburses. Turned on a person it becomes praise, since le dépassement de soi is the pushing past of one’s own limit. A single verb, dépasser, carries all of it, which is why the same word can be read on a motorway sign and in an air quality bulletin without anybody noticing the jump. What settles the sense is never the verb but the noun behind it, and the rule for reading is short: look at what is being passed.