Running and the marathon

Two thirds of the way down the list sits a assadura, the raw patch a long run leaves where a seam has been moving against skin for hours. The word is built on assar, to roast, the verb of an oven and of a Sunday lunch, so a Portuguese runner says in effect that the place has been roasted. « Chafing » looks like the sober English answer, a word about friction and nothing else, and it is nothing of the kind. « To chafe » came into English from Old French chaufer, to warm, which is today’s chauffer, and behind that stands Latin calefacere, from calere, to be warm, and facere, to make. The earliest English sense was simply to heat something; the rubbing came later, by way of the hands one rubs together on a cold morning. So the two languages looked at the same injury and recorded the same observation, that the place is hot, and then buried it at different depths. Portuguese still hears the oven. English has lost the fire and believes it is describing friction.