Catalysis

The last entry on this list is a escala de produção, and the English word that answers it overlaps in the middle and parts company at both ends. In the middle the two agree completely: a map has a scale, a thermometer has a scale, music has a scale, and work carried out « at production scale » is exactly à escala de produção. Beyond that, each language keeps senses the other has no use for. English « scale » is also the small plate on a fish, which Portuguese calls a escama, and it is the machine one stands on to be weighed, which is a balança and which English stubbornly pluralises, « a set of scales ». Portuguese runs off in the other direction. Uma escala is a stop on a journey, so um voo sem escalas is a non-stop flight and fazer escala em Lisboa is to change planes there; and a escala de serviço is the duty roster pinned up on a ward wall, which British usage calls « the rota ». None of those four crosses over, so the word is safe here and treacherous everywhere else.