Arms control in French

The thirtieth entry is les forces conventionnelles, and it is the one place on this list where the adjective means what an English reader expects it to mean. Almost everywhere else in French it does not. « Conventional » in English says ordinary, customary, done the usual way, and French has that sense too — une arme conventionnelle is a weapon that is neither nuclear nor chemical nor biological. But the commoner French sense is the legal one, and it points the other way: conventionnel describes what two parties have agreed between themselves, as opposed to what a statute imposes. Le taux conventionnel is the rate written into the contract, les dispositions conventionnelles are the terms the two sides negotiated, and l’indemnité conventionnelle is the payment they settled on rather than the one the law fixes. The cousin form goes further still. Un médecin conventionné is a doctor who has signed up to the public tariff, and there is nothing ordinary about that at all. So read the adjective twice. On this page it counts tanks; on a payslip it names a contract.