Blame and responsibility

Faire porter le chapeau is the sharpest thing in this list and the one no dictionary renders in a single word. Literally it is to make somebody wear the hat, and the hat is the blame for something they did not do. The plain form, porter le chapeau, is what happens to you: c’est lui qui a porté le chapeau says the whole business landed on him and stayed there. Add the causative faire and the same image turns outward — on lui a fait porter le chapeau — so one small verb decides whether you are the one wearing it or the one handing it over. English cannot follow that with a single expression. For the receiving end we say « to carry the can », which matches the register well, workplace rather than courtroom; for the giving end the idiom has to change altogether and we say « to pin it on somebody ». So French covers both directions with one hat and a causative, while English needs two unrelated pictures, a tin and a pin, to do the same two jobs.