Post, parcels and the bank account

The second entry is o envelope, and an English reader can take more from it than a translation. Our « envelope » came from the French noun enveloppe, built on envelopper, to wrap a thing up. Beside that verb stood its opposite, desveloper, to take the wrapping off, and English borrowed that one as well and now spells it « develop ». The two are a matched pair, and once that is seen the modern senses fall into line: a photograph is developed because the picture is unwrapped from the film, an argument is developed by being opened out rather than by being made longer, and a plot develops because what was folded up in it comes out. Nothing of that survives in the piece of paper. Portuguese took o envelope from the same French noun and asks it to do one job only, so Escreve a morada no envelope antes de fechar is about the paper and about nothing else. One gesture, two words, read from opposite ends.