Plumbing and sanitation

The fourteenth entry is le regard de visite, and the noun in front of it is where an English reader loses their footing, because here it has stopped meaning what it means everywhere else. Le regard is first of all a look, and usually a deliberate one: un regard noir is a glare, elle a croisé son regard is two pairs of eyes meeting, sous le regard de tous is in full view of everybody. From the eye it moves to the mind, so porter un regard neuf sur une question is to take a fresh view of it, and the fixed phrase au regard de la loi means in the eyes of the law. And then, with no warning at all, the word becomes a piece of ironwork in a pavement. A regard is the small chamber through which a buried drain can be opened, rodded and looked at, and a builder uses the word with no feeling of metaphor whatever. One idea holds all three together: a regard is wherever looking is possible. English needs « look », « view » and « inspection chamber », and the family disappears.