Falconry

The eighth entry is o poleiro, the padded bar a hawk sits on, and English renders it with « perch » — a spelling that covers two histories with nothing in common. The bird’s « perch » came through Old French from the Latin pertica, a pole or a long measuring rod, so the name describes the stick and says nothing at all about the creature on it. That same pertica left a second deposit in English which surveyors still meet: « a perch » is a unit of length, five and a half yards, also called a rod or a pole, and it turns up in old deeds and field books. The third « perch » arrived by its own road. The freshwater fish is perca in Latin, from perkē in Greek, and it never had anything to do with sticks. Portuguese keeps the three apart and is never obliged to choose: o poleiro is the bar, a vara the old measuring pole, and a perca the fish. An English reader has to let the sentence settle which one is meant.