Appointments and arrangements

This is the vocabulary of a diary and a waiting room. A quarter of the way down comes la plage horaire, a slot in a timetable, and the word inside it is la plage — the same beach you lie on in August. What the two have in common is the shape: a flat stretch with a clear beginning and end. From there French uses it for any bounded run of something. Une plage horaire is a block of time; une plage de valeurs is a range of figures; une plage on a record is one track, because it is one band on the disc; and faire une plage dans le texte is to leave a gap. English changes word every time — slot, range, track, gap — and keeps « beach » for the sand alone.