Organising an event

The twentieth entry is a pulseira de acesso, the access wristband, and the noun that carries it is built on a part of the body that English names from somewhere else entirely. O pulso is the wrist, and it is equally the pulse, because the word is the Latin pulsus, a beating, the past participle of pellere, to strike. Portuguese named the joint after what a finger can feel there, and then built a pulseira on it: the thing that goes round the beating place, whether it is a bracelet or the paper band handed out at a door. English took the same pulsus and kept only the beat, in « pulse », while the joint itself came out of the other half of the language. « Wrist » is Germanic and belongs with « writhe » and « wreath »: it is the turning place, named for what the hand does there. And when a word was needed for the ornament, English borrowed « bracelet » from French, where it is built on bracchium, the arm. One joint, three answers: a beat, a turn, and the limb next door.