Measurement technology

Le décalage de zéro is the zero offset, and décalage is one of those French nouns an English speaker meets four times and has to translate differently on every occasion. Here it is the instrument’s fault: the reading sits a fixed distance away from where it belongs. Say le décalage horaire and it is the difference between two time zones, and then, by extension, what that difference does to a traveller — « jet lag », for which French has no separate word at all. Say un décalage entre le discours et les actes and it is a mismatch, the gap between what is said and what is done, with nothing being measured anywhere. And the participle has travelled furthest of the four: un humour décalé, un film décalé means quirky, offbeat, agreeably out of step with what was expected, and it is a compliment. One image holds all four together, something shifted off the position it was set in; English changes words each time and loses the thread between them.