  In the Higgs mechanism, mediators of the weak force acquire masses by
interacting with the Higgs condensate, leading to a vector boson mass matrix.
On the other hand, a rigid body accelerated through an inviscid, incompressible
and irrotational fluid feels an opposing force linearly related to its
acceleration, via an added-mass tensor. We uncover a striking physical analogy
between the two effects and propose a dictionary relating them. The
correspondence turns the gauge Lie algebra into the space of directions in
which the body can move, encodes the pattern of gauge symmetry breaking in the
shape of an associated body and relates symmetries of the body to those of the
scalar vacuum manifold. The new viewpoint is illustrated with numerous
examples, and raises interesting questions, notably on the fluid analogs of the
broken symmetry and Higgs particle, and the field-theoretic analogue of the
added mass of a composite body.
