Palliative medicine

The twenty-fifth entry is l’évaluation du discernement, and it holds the cleanest false friend on this list, because the English cognate exists, is respectable, and is wrong. Le discernement is a capacity in the legal sense: the ability to understand what is being proposed, to weigh it against the alternatives, and to say yes or no. Somebody capable de discernement may decide for himself, and l’évaluation du discernement is the formal check a clinician makes before a refusal or a consent counts for anything. « Discernment » names none of that. It is fineness of judgement — « a collector of real discernment », « discernment in choosing his words » — and in religious usage it is the slow business of telling one calling from another. Nobody is ever assessed for it, and no form asks about it. The word English uses here is « capacity », and the whole vocabulary hangs on it: « a capacity assessment », « a patient who lacks capacity ». So render the entry as « the capacity assessment », and keep « discernment » for a wine list.