Respiratory medicine

The tenth entry is les râles, and it is the place on this list where one French word has to be unpacked into four English ones. In a chest, les râles are the wet clicking heard through a stethoscope, and the English word for that is « crackles ». « Rales » was the borrowed term for a century and has been dropped on purpose, because half the profession used it of one sound and half of another; a report that still carries it is being read rather than understood. Away from the clinic the same noun keeps going. Le râle of somebody dying is the « death rattle ». Le râle des genêts is a bird, the corncrake, named after the noise it makes in a hayfield at night. And the verb has travelled furthest of all: râler in everyday French is to grumble, so il râle tout le temps describes a colleague and not a patient. One rasping sound, four English words, and only the first of them belongs in a lung report.