Nephrology

The twenty-eighth entry is la diurèse, and the English word that looks ready to take it has a much narrower job. In English, « diuresis » names an increase: an unusually large flow of urine, the thing a diuretic is given to produce, and a doctor writes it down because something has changed — « a brisk diuresis after the drug », « post-obstructive diuresis ». It is a word about a direction of travel. La diurèse makes no such claim. It is simply the quantity of urine produced, large or small or none at all, the figure that goes on the chart at the end of a shift: la diurèse conservée says the patient still passes water, la diurèse nulle says the opposite, and neither could be said with the English noun. What belongs in an English chart is « urine output », or on a fluid balance sheet « output » on its own. Hold the two nouns apart and the adjectives look after themselves, because diurétique and « diuretic » do match exactly: there the idea of an increase sits in both languages. It is the noun alone that has drifted.