Clothes

Sixteenth on this list sits a mala, and it is the one word here that an English reader has been carrying about for years without noticing. Mala came into Portuguese from Old French male, a leather bag strapped to a horse, and behind that stands a Frankish word, malha. That same male crossed the Channel and became « mail ». For centuries a « mail » in English was the bag itself, the sealed pouch a rider carried from town to town; only later did the name slide off the container and onto the contents, so that « mail » stopped being a thing anybody could pick up and became the letters inside, then the service that moves them, then a message on a screen. Portuguese never let the bag go. A mala is the suitcase by the door, a mala de mão is a handbag, and a mala do correio still names the postbag exactly as English once did. One borrowing, two endings: we kept the letters and mislaid the bag, and Portuguese kept the bag.