Chess

The fifth entry is a fileira, and for an English reader it is the trap of the whole list, because the word looks like « file » and points the other way. A fileira runs across the board, from one side to the other, and English calls that a rank. The line that runs away from the player, from his own end towards the far end, is a coluna, and that is what English calls a file. Read a torre domina a fileira toda as a rook on an open file and the position has been turned through ninety degrees. The two words are relatives, which is what makes the crossing so easy: each began by naming people standing in a line, and each was then handed one of the two directions of the board — and not the same one. English keeps the pair together in one phrase. « The rank and file » were the soldiers drawn up shoulder to shoulder and one behind another, and the phrase now means the ordinary members of a party, a union or a firm — the two directions of this board, still doing duty in the newspapers.