The car and the garage

Halfway down the list sits la batteria, a word English borrowed long ago and then used for only part of its work. Underneath both is Latin battuere, to beat, which gave Italian battere and French battre, and every later sense grows out of that single action. The oldest is military: a battery of guns is a set of them placed together to beat on a wall, and both languages still say it. From a set of guns the word spread to any set ranged side by side, which is how the electrical one got its name — a row of jars joined up, long before anything was portable. Italian then took a step English did not. La batteria is also the drum kit, the instruments that are beaten in the plainest sense, and il batterista is the drummer. English says « drums » for that and keeps « battery » for the car, for the guns and, in a courtroom, for an unlawful beating: the sense nearest the Latin and furthest from a garage.