Moving house

Le garde-meuble, near the end of this list, is where the furniture waits out the gap between two flats, and the first half of the word is an English word in disguise. The verb behind it is not Latin. Old French took the Frankish wardōn, to watch over, and the same Germanic verb came down into English on its own as « to ward ». One sound change separates them: Old French turned an initial w- into gu- and then into plain g-, so wardōn became guarder and at last garder. Norman French, the variety that crossed the Channel, kept the w-, and that is why English ended up holding both halves of several pairs at once: « warden » beside « guardian », « warranty » beside « guarantee », « war » beside la guerre. The clearest of them is a piece of furniture: « wardrobe » is the Norman spelling of la garde-robe, the same two parts in the same order. Le garde-meuble is that compound built once more, with le meuble standing where the clothes used to be, and le monte-meuble two lines further on is cut to the same pattern.