Building services

The eleventh entry is o ensaio de estanquidade ao ar, and the noun in the middle of it is the ancestor of an English word nobody would file beside it. Estanque means holding water in, letting nothing through, and a estanquidade is that quality measured. Old French had the same adjective, estanche, watertight, and English took it over twice. Once as a verb: to « stanch » a wound is to stop what is running out of it, and a plumber still stanches a leak. Once as an adjective, and there the word went travelling. What holds water is firm, what is firm can be relied on, and by the middle of the fifteenth century the sense had left the water behind. All that survives today is loyalty: « a staunch ally », « a staunch defender », « staunch support », said of people and never of pipes. Two spellings now sort the halves, and not reliably even then. So the family word under a house reported estanque is the one English keeps for somebody who does not let anybody down.