Physiotherapy

The last word on this list is solliciter, and it is the one an English reader recognises and then uses wrongly. Ce mouvement sollicite trop le genou does not mean that anything is being requested of the knee. Solliciter in French is to call something into action, to make it work, to put demands on it, and it is the ordinary verb of an exercise sheet: un exercice qui sollicite les fessiers, une articulation trop sollicitée. The same verb runs through engineering, where une pièce fortement sollicitée is a part under heavy load and les sollicitations are the forces acting on a structure. French has the asking sense as well — solliciter un rendez-vous, solliciter une aide — so both branches live in one word and the object decides which is meant. English kept only the asking branch and then narrowed it further, until « to solicit » suggests an approach nobody invited and « a solicitor » is a lawyer. There is no English sentence in which a movement solicits a joint, so the cognate has to be left behind: what the knee is put under is strain.