Urology in French

The twenty-sixth entry is la fonction érectile, and the noun in it does more work in French than its English twin lets on. In the clinic it means what an organ does, as it does in English: la fonction vésicale, une fonction préservée. Outside the clinic it names a post and the people who hold one. Entrer en fonction is to take up office, faire fonction de directeur is to act as director, la fonction publique is the civil service taken as a whole, and un fonctionnaire is one of its members. Then the noun turns into a preposition. En fonction de means depending on or according to, as in la dose varie en fonction du poids, and it is one of the commonest phrases in any French report, so reading « as a function of » there turns an ordinary sentence into algebra. The traffic also runs the other way. « A function » in English is also a reception or a formal dinner, and une fonction never is: that is une réception or une soirée. So a consultation that raises la fonction érectile is asking what still works, and nothing more.