Contract and liability

The verb near the end of this list looks like a straight loan and is not. Stipuler is here because legal French puts the paper itself in the subject position: le contrat stipule un préavis de trois mois, l’article prévoit une exception, la loi dispose autrement. The document speaks, and the people who signed it are nowhere in the sentence. English does that too, but only with a small set of verbs — « the contract provides », « the clause states », « the section requires » — and « stipulate » is not one of them. In English a person stipulates, out loud and usually reluctantly: « she stipulated that the fee be paid in advance ». So le contrat stipule que comes out as « the contract provides that », and the reverse slip is the costly one: « the contract stipulates » in an English agreement reads as though somebody had insisted on the term, not as though it were simply written there. Latin stipulari named a bargain struck by a spoken question and a spoken answer, so the English word kept the voice and the French word kept the page.