…the eldrae are gonna be a bit angry at the English language (with corresponding implications for what its speakers must be like) for using the same word for “the standard action” and “breaking a contract”.
(This was a half-dream thought that I decided might be kinda important for Earth Fanfic but might be more relevantly discussed here first.)
(Apparently the semantic pathway is [something to the effect of] “breaking a contract” → “not doing the contract” → “not doing anything” → “what happens when you don’t do anything” → “what happens without specific action otherwise” → “the standard action, absent deviations”, with most of the previous steps still somewhat extant in the language. This makes it slightly more reasonable, though the first and last are probably still the most salient meanings.)