Security policy

The sixteenth entry is l’ogive, and an English reader who knows the word at all probably knows it from a guidebook to cathedrals. That is where it began in French too. Une ogive is the diagonal rib that crosses a Gothic vault, and une croisée d’ogives is the rib vault itself, two arches meeting in an X overhead. Because those ribs rise to a point, the word slid across to the pointed arch as well, and un arc en ogive is what English calls a lancet or pointed arch. Then the shape left the church. Ballistics borrowed it for the curved, pointed nose of a shell, and from the nose it spread to whatever the nose contains, so that une ogive nucléaire is a nuclear warhead, the whole charge and not merely its casing. English kept « ogive » for the curve, and statisticians use it for a cumulative frequency graph, but it has never been asked to carry explosives. So in a treaty text read « warhead »; under a vaulted roof, read « rib ».