postillon

The other day we learned that William Shakespeare gave us the word droplet and we now shown the observation from BBC correspondent Hugh Schofield that the more precise, apropos term to describe the mechanism of viral transmission in French employs the borrowed and lent word for a teamster that guides a horse-drawn coach.
Though not much in common-parlance in English since the adoption of the horseless carriage except in the phrase “posting to the trot”—that is adjusting one’s gait and pace to the rhythm of one’s mount or other means of conveyance and the ludicrous, said-no-one-ever phrase from the Portuguese primer English as she is Spoke, “Pardon me, but your postilion has been struck by lightning.” What might be put less delicately in English as spittle or salivary output is framed rather metaphorically as a forerunner who heralds one’s presence to one’s interlocutor. Porter un masque pour vous protéger et protéger les autres