Joinery and cabinetmaking

The tenth entry is la traverse d’about, and both of its nouns look like English words they have nothing to do with. Take the second one first. L’about is not a preposition at all. It is a masculine noun built on le bout, the end, and in a workshop it names the extremity of a piece of timber cut to meet another one; the final t is silent, as it is in bout. Its verb is abouter, to join two pieces end to end. Then the first noun. English « traverse » is a verb of crossing, or on a rock face a sideways climb, while French la traverse is an object: the horizontal member running across a frame, which a cabinetmaker here calls a rail. The same word lies under a railway track as the sleeper, and un chemin de traverse is a short cut over the fields. Put the two together and you have the rail fixed across the end grain of a tabletop to keep it flat, what English calls a breadboard end. To English eyes the phrase describes a journey; to a joiner it is a strip of wood.