Negotiating and closing contracts

The twenty-sixth entry is a conta de garantia, and the English name for the same account is, underneath, a scrap of parchment. « Escrow » came into the language as Anglo-Norman escrowe, from Old French escroue, a strip or shred of skin — and a strip of skin was what a deed was written on when it was left with a third person until a condition had been met. The word names the object and not the arrangement, which is why it tells a first-time reader nothing whatever. Then it did something odd for a noun. It stopped being a thing and turned into a state, so that money is now held « in escrow », with no article in front of it, and the parchment has vanished out of its own word. Portuguese took the other road and named the job instead. A conta de garantia says plainly what the account is for, and a garantia carries the whole of the sense. The difference is worth noticing in a contract. Conta de garantia can be understood by somebody who has never met one, while « escrow account » has to be defined before it can be used.