Bridge building

The fourth entry is a erosão localizada, and the two languages stand at different distances from it. Portuguese builds the term out of a learned noun and a qualifier: erosion, and the fact that it happens in one spot rather than everywhere. It is clear, and nobody says it at home. English reaches instead for one syllable, and it is a kitchen word. « To scour » is what you do to a burnt pan with wire wool, and « a scourer » lives under the sink. The same verb has long been used of what running water does to a riverbed, and it walked into engineering unchanged: « scour » is the carrying away of the bed from around a pier, « a scour hole » is what is left behind, and « scour protection » is the stone tipped in to stop it. The report’s word and the sink’s word are one, and the picture is exact: the river rubs at the foundation as a hand rubs at a pot, patiently, from below. A reader who meets « scour » in a bridge report and thinks of cleaning has not misread it.