Spaceflight

The thirteenth entry is a segurança do polígono de lançamento, and the English for it is « range safety », two words a reader can know separately and still fail to assemble. O polígono pictures a fenced shape drawn on a map; « a range » pictures a distance you are allowed to cross. The noun does at least five jobs, and none of them predicts the others. It is ground set aside for firing into, which is the sense here and the sense in « a rifle range » and « a bombing range ». It is a line of mountains, « a mountain range ». It is the span between two limits, « a range of prices », « out of range », « the range of an aircraft ». It is a set of goods offered together, « a new range of tools ». And in a kitchen it is the heavy cooker standing against the wall. What holds the middle group together is the old verb « to range », to wander over an extent of ground; the cooker has no such excuse and simply kept the earliest sense of the word, which was a row.