The town and the way there

This is the list for a first walk through a town. One of its words covers a whole building and a single piece of furniture at once. Le bureau is the room you work in — je suis au bureau — and it is also the desk standing in that room, pose-le sur mon bureau. The word began as the coarse cloth, la bure, that covered a writing table; from the cloth it moved to the table, from the table to the room and from the room to the institution. That last step gives le bureau de poste, the post office, and le bureau de vote, the polling station. English borrowed the word and kept only a chest of drawers. « Office » and « desk » do the rest, and never meet.