At the notary

Before a Spanish notary the paper one signs is not called a deed but el instrumento público, and what one takes home afterwards is only la copia autorizada — the original stays in the notary's protocolo. One verb runs through the whole of it, and English answers it with three. Otorgar is « to grant » when it is a licence or a power, « to award » when it is a prize or a contract, and « to execute » when it is a deed: otorgar una escritura is to execute one, never to grant it. The person doing it is el otorgante, which English does render in one word, « the grantor » — but only in the deed sense, so the noun and the verb line up nowhere else. Four entries of this list are built on that verb, and a reader who has learned it as « to grant » will get three of them wrong.