Comics and the graphic novel

The tenth entry is o preenchimento de cores planas, and the English word at the heart of it does two jobs that have nothing to do with each other. « Flat » the adjective is the one this entry needs: a colour laid down level, with no modelling in it, put on the page before anybody paints a shadow. That word came in from Old Norse flatr and has spread everywhere — a drink goes flat, a tyre goes flat, a note is sung flat, a joke falls flat, and somebody « flat broke » has nothing at all. But « a flat », the place a Londoner lives in, is not that word. It is an alteration of Scots flet, a floor, a dwelling on one storey, and it came to look like the adjective only because the two settled into the same four letters. Americans keep the older sense out of the way by saying « apartment », which is why the trap is a British one. Portuguese is spared the whole tangle: plano paints the colour, o apartamento houses the reader, and the two share nothing whatever.