Rheumatology

The sixth entry is le traitement de fond, and the short word at the end of it is the one an English reader walks straight past, because it is spelled like something we use every day. « Fond » in English means affectionate — fond of somebody, a fond memory — and it comes from Middle English fonned, built on fon, a fool, so being fond once meant being foolish. French le fond has no relation to any of that. It is the bottom of a thing and, from there, its substance: le fond de la casserole, le fond du problème, aller au fond des choses. The same picture gives une tendance de fond, a movement deep enough to outlast the week’s news, un bruit de fond, and une course de fond, which is long-distance running and nothing profound at all. So un traitement de fond is the treatment aimed at what lies underneath, at the disease itself over months, as against the one that quiets today’s pain. Nobody is fond of anything here, and « basic treatment » throws away the depth the word is carrying. These pages explain the vocabulary of a specialist field and give no medical advice.