Pipeline engineering

The fifteenth entry, abblasen, leads two lives, and a pipeline report and a newspaper use different ones. On the line it is literal: gas is let out of a closed section until no pressure is left, der Abschnitt wird abgeblasen, and only then may anyone cut into the pipe. In ordinary German the same verb means to call something off, usually something organised and usually at short notice: die Gewerkschaft hat den Streik abgeblasen, die Feier wurde abgeblasen. That second sense is colloquial, and a formal letter would write abgesagt; the first has no everyday substitute on a work permit. Both senses conjugate alike, separable and strong: man bläst ab, blies ab, hat abgeblasen. Context settles it almost at once, since a strike has no pressure to lose and nobody cancels a pipe.