There was some discussion at the French conversation group last night about job applications – one member of the group has been offered a job in an international school in southern France and will be moving there soon.

The word application exists in French, but it’s not the one you use when applying for a job. Instead it is used when applying a lotion or treatment or an invention or method. Also when implementing a decision or measure or enforcing the law. It is also used for software app(lication)s.

Expressions featuring the word include:

– mettre en application = to implement, apply, enforce
– application cruciale = mission-critical application
– application informatique = IT application
– école d’application = officers’ training school

An application for a job is une demande or une candidature, and a job application form is un formulaire or un bulletin de demande d’emploi. To apply for a job is poser une candidature pour un emploi / poste or postuler / poser sa candidature pour un emploi.

The French word appliquer can mean ‘to apply (a lotion or cream; or an invention or method), to implement (a decision); to enfore (the law); or to give’. The reflexive version of this verb, s’appliquer, can mean ‘to apply oneself (to doing sth); to apply to (the law)’ and s’appliquer sur means ‘to fit over’.

The English word apply comes from French, and the French word appliquer comes from the Latin applicāre (to apply, to put, to stick, to spread; to impose, to enforce), from applicō (I apply, attach, join to), from ad- (to; towards) +‎ plicō ‎(fold; arrive), from the Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- ‎(to plait, to weave), which also the root of the English words plait, plat and pleat.

Source: Reverso

Quite a lot of rain has fallen over the past day or so in the UK, thanks to Storm Angus, so I thought I’d look at the origins of some rain-related words.

The word rain comes from the Old English rēn/reġn ‎(rain), from the Proto-Germanic *regnaz ‎(rain), possibly from the Proto-Indo-European *Hreǵ- ‎(to flow) or from *reg- (moist, wet).

When rain falls heavily it might be called torrential – it certainly was yesterday – a word which comes from torrent (rapid stream), from the Middle French torrent, from Latin torrentem from torrēns (rushing, roaring (of streams); a rushing stream), a word which originally meant “roaring, boiling, burning, parching, hot, inflamed”, and which is the present participle of torrere (to parch).

With heavy rain you get floods, a word which comes from the Old English flōd (a flowing of water, tide, an overflowing of land by water, a deluge, mass of water, river, sea, wave)”, from the Proto-Germanic *floduz (flowing water, deluge), from the Proto-Indo-European root *pleu- (to flow, float, swim), which is also the root of flow.

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionary, Daily Post

Here’s a video of the sea being rather lively at Colwyn Bay (from the Daily Post).

It wasn’t just raining cats and dogs, but elephants and hippopotamuses too – that’s what it felt like anyway.

More idioms for heavy rain in various languages.

Do you know any interesting expressions for heavy rain?