Shipbuilding

The second entry is le déplacement du navire, and the noun in the middle of it is one an English reader recognises at sight and then meets ashore doing work « displacement » has never done. In the shipyard the two words agree exactly: the weight of water a hull pushes aside is its displacement, and there is no trap in the term at all. Off the slipway the French word carries on working. Être en déplacement is to be away on business; les frais de déplacement are travel expenses, the line every plumber prints on an invoice; un match en déplacement is an away fixture, the opposite of à domicile; and le déplacement d’une réunion is moving it to another day. One picture holds the whole family together, something shifted off the place it occupied, and English simply refuses to follow it once a person is doing the shifting: we travel, we move a meeting, we play away. So le directeur est en déplacement reports a diary, not a disturbance, and nobody has been displaced.