Politics and diplomacy

L’intérêt particulier looks like « a particular interest » and is very nearly its opposite. The ordinary sense of particulier in French is private, individual, belonging to one person rather than to everybody, so l’intérêt particulier is self-interest — and it is one half of a pair, standing against l’intérêt général, the public interest, which is the opposition the sentence in this list is built on. The noun makes it plainer still. Un particulier is a private citizen, the person who is neither a firm nor the state, and he is all over French signage and small print: vente entre particuliers, réservé aux particuliers, une banque de particuliers. What makes the word dangerous is that it is not always false. En particulier really does mean « in particular », and un cas particulier really is a special case, so a reader is confirmed just often enough to stop checking. Where English « particular » means specific, French reaches for précis or spécifique; where it means hard to please, French says exigeant or pointilleux.