In some jobs, the name funds must be written with a s even in the singular. We write well a goodwill, a mutual fund, a provident fund Where bearing, an ethical fund, a retirement fund, the International Monetary Fund, the manuscript fund of the National Library.
This s of funds is often omitted, by confusion with its homophone background. The bottom of a bottle, from a well, the back of the room, from his pocket, the bottom of the story. Feature article. The bottom of the sea, a ground swell. Underground miner. Cross-country skiing. From top to bottom, against a background of hostility. A background sound, foundation, know a subject thoroughly, speak from the heart, have a good background. A background.
In fact, background and funds are two variant spellings of the same word, underlines the Dictionary of the difficulties and pitfalls of the French language. “ The two words only differed graphically from the XVIIe century, arbitrarily. According to Littré, we should remove the s and, in the singular, always write background.
The adjective land comes from an old form of backgroundeither funds. A landowner owns a fund, land. Cultivate your fund, build on your fund. The property tax is relative to a real estatea word that “designates both the land and the building (that is to say the buildings constructed on the land)”, specifies the Jurisdiction of the Government of Canada.
Word funds in the plural means cash or capital used for financing. Fund conveyor. Embezzlement. Call for funds. Downpayment. Funder. Be in funds.
A third homophone, fontsfrom the same family as fountain, this one, is rarely used. The plural noun baptismal font designates the “basin placed on a pedestal and intended for the water of baptism”. The expression hold a child at the baptismal font means to be its godfather or godmother.
The baptismal font chapel is called the baptistry. This name should not be confused with its namesake. baptistery which is used to designate a document, the baptismal certificate.
The LGBTQ+ symbol
Rather than the horrible LGBTQ+, why not just talk about “sexual minorities”?
Answer
Because that would be too restrictive a term, no doubt. The acronym LGBT, which corresponds to the names lesbian, cheerful, bisexual and trans, has continued to expand over time to represent other realities and include as many people as possible. To The Press, we decided to limit the length. We don’t write, for example, LGBTQQIP2SAA, only LGBTQ+.
The acronym is supposed not to exclude anyone, but it seems that it does not succeed. Some have thus proposed the acronym MOGAI for marginalized orientations, gender identities, and intersex, which would translate into (sexual) orientations and marginalized and intersex gender identities and which has the disadvantage of using the adjective marginalized. We also encountered during our readings the acronym GRSM, for gender, romantic, and sexual minorities.
Some also propose the acronym DSG, for sexual and gender diversity, which has the advantage of being very short and inclusive, since it does not specify “any gender identity or sexual orientation”, we read in the Lexicon on the sexual and gender diversity from the Translation Bureau of the Government of Canada. But it is still relatively uncommon.