School, university, training

The forty-fifth entry is o quadro de honra, and the obvious English rendering is a trap. The thing itself — a board in the entrance hall carrying the names that did best — is « the honours board », and the plural is fixed: no school has an honour board. But « a roll of honour », which looks like the same idea, has been taken over in British use by the war memorial. A roll of honour is the list of a parish’s or a regiment’s dead, and it is read that way first. « The honor roll » of an American school is a third thing, and the spelling gives it away. The split runs through the whole word. In the singular, « honour » is the abstraction: a matter of honour, in her honour. In the plural it belongs to schooling and to ceremony — a degree taken « with honours », « an honours degree », « first-class honours », and the board on the wall. So o quadro de honra is the honours board, and a translator who reaches for « roll of honour » has turned a prize list into a war memorial.