Theatre and the stage

The eighteenth entry is a gelatina, and it is a fossil: the word names a material that stage lighting stopped using long ago. The first coloured filters really were sheets of gelatine, dyed and dried and slid into a frame in front of a lamp. They faded, they buckled in the heat, and they have been made of plastic for decades. Portuguese kept the whole word, so the history stays legible inside it — a gelatina azul still says gelatine although nothing in the frame is gelatine any more. English kept the same fossil and filed it down. On a lighting plan and in every conversation on the rig, the filter is « a gel »: « put a gel in it », « the gels are in the drawer », « a colour gel ». Clipped to one syllable the word stopped pointing at anything, which is why a reader who meets « gel » first will never guess what it once was, while a reader who meets a gelatina can hardly avoid guessing. Our own full word went to the kitchen instead: « gelatine » sets a pudding and belongs in a recipe, never in a lantern.