From French to English:
We all know that if
there is one common characteristic among languages, it is their
permeability. Languages are like
sponges. Foreign elements have crept in into each of them, sometimes for so
many centuries that we no longer can recognize the foreign implant. French and
English in particular have enjoyed such intimate relations that we can follow
their history, which resembles a long love story between the most Latin of the
Germanic languages, English that is, and French, the most Germanic of the
Romance Languages.
We
also know that English has greatly borrowed from French. Do I need to mention
the Norman conquest that introduced the Anglo-Norman language to the Court of
England (whose motto remains today Dieu et mon droit i.e. My God-given right)
There
are in English a whole series of words that still bear their Anglo-Norman
origin, marked with an initial “w”, whereas Modern French is now
written with a hard “g”. Here are some examples:
wafer gaufrette
wage gages
war guerre
to waste gâter
(to spoil) & gaspiller (to waste)
warrant garantie >
guaranty
warden gardien >
guardian
You
see in the last two examples that later English borrowings no longer retained
the Norman “w” but the Modern French mark, the “g”.
Thus next to warrant, we also
have guaranty, the same as we
have guardian in addition to warden. You’ve noticed that the silent
“u” in guaranty or
in guardian has remained as a
witness of French borrowing .
to end to
finish
to feed to
nourish
to fight to
combat
to shun to
avoid
to win to
gain
folk people
inner interior
might power
wish desire
hazy vague
hearty cordial
loving amorous
raw crude
With
the Norman occupation new trades had developed in England. From the following
14 words, five (5) have an Anglo-Norman origin. Which are they?
baker
butcher
carpenter
fisherman
joiner
mason
miller
painter
saddler
shepherd
shoemaker
smith
tailor
weaver
butcher from boucher, carpenter from charpentier, mason from maçon, painter from peintre, and tailor from tailleur are of Anglo-Norman origin. Incidentally did you
know that, in French, the original occupation of the boucher seems to have been the slaying of he-goats. An
old French ordinance states that the bocher “shall not cast the blood of goats in
public ways, nor slaughter the goats in the streets.” In the word joiner, (modern French, menuisier) there is the connotation of the craftsman joining
together pieces of wood. The same as the English word tailor stands for French tailleur, the patronymic Bollinger stands for boulanger
(baker). You’ve recognized in Bollinger and boulanger the word boule, (the shape of the bread and the etymology of the
word boulanger, the maker of boules of bread.
You know that etymology is the study of the origin, formation, and
development of a word; another term borrowed from Old French (OF) from the
Greek etumon,
i.e. the literal sense of a word, its original form. Although you already know
that English has heavily borrowed from French, you may be surprised, for
instance, to learn that
1.
To attest comes directly from attester, from Latin ad-testari, to be witness, a verb originating in the word testis, witness. If we go back to the origin of testis, we find the Indo-European stem *tre-tri, which we have in both the Romance and Germanic
languages, i.e. in the Latin tres and
in tres, tre, três, three, drei, etc. A witness is that third
person who can testify in a conflict opposing two other people. In a totally
different domain, to the same testis Latin was added a diminutive, -ulus, which gave the word… testiculus = “little witness”… to the
virility of man?, which doesn’t need any translation in either language.
Paulo majora canamus. “Let us chant higher things.”
The
Latin tres gave also trivial, from trivialis <
“of the three ways,” which you can paraphrase as the modern gossip
at the water cooler, or as the crossroad where prostitutes waited for their
customers or the spot where the women would meet and chat on the way back from
market.
2.
boudoir (a woman’s bedroom),
comes from the French word bouder
(to pout). In the Middle Ages, for “time out”, a young lady was
sent to her boudoir to get
over the sulks. So a lady’s boudoir is really her pouting-room.
3.
corset (a little body).
This word is a diminutive of the OF word cors, “body,” and it is quite proper that
it is a diminutive, for a corset
is supposed to make a body smaller. The OF word cors, which comes from the Latin corpus, gave in French corpulent, later borrowed by English, a condition that a corset should help correct.
4. coward
came originally from the latin cauda (tail), but it came into English from the OF word couard. The little hare in the Old French fables of
Reynard the Fox was named Coart,
and his most salient characteristic was its timidity. So apparently a coward is
one who turns tail and runs.
5.
curfew comes from the the OF word cuevrefeu, “a covering of the fire”. Thus, in the Middle Ages there was a
regulation that fires had to be covered and people had to be home and off the
street by a certain time.
6.
dandelion comes from the OF word dent de lion (tooth of the lion). Probably because of its diuretic property, it is commonly
called in French pissenlit,
literally “piss in bed.” Another verb borrowed from French, the
origin of which is unknown. On the other hand, diuretic comes from Greek dia = through + ourein
= to urinate.
7.
to flatter comes from the OF flater (to caress with the hand). Praising people with a
lot of wonderful, if untrue, words is like stroking them the way we pet a cat
or dog.
8.
puppy Middle English popi(e), which corresponds in form to OF popée, Modern French poupée, i.e doll, a toy, a plaything.
9.
puny literally
“born later.” The word is directly from the 12th-century
French puisné, from puis, “later”, and né “born,” and its meaning “of
small growth” or “weak” simply refers to the fact that babies
and younger children “born later” have less strength than the older
ones. You’ll notice how the two words are almost identical in sound: puisné – puny.
10. zest comes
from the French word zeste (lemon
or orange peel). If you add lemon peel to food, it gives extra flavor, in the
same way as enthusiasm adds enjoyment to life.
Here are a 10 words all
related to food or cooking. Can you guess the corresponding English word?
1. Latin alere,
“to nourish”. Two English words coming from alere, meaning to nourish, to supply with food, are:
aliment, and from alimonia, (nutriment, support) came also alimony, etymologically
“eating money.”
2. Aztec ahuactl, Spanish aguacate. The native Mexican name was ahuactl, which really meant “testicle.” This
spelling was a little hard for the Spanish tongue to handle, so they smoothed
it off to avocado, which is in
French as well, the name for an advocate (French avocat) or lawyer. Another name for avocado in English is “alligator pear,” which
is a perfect example of folk etymology:
the Persea Americana
trees are said to grow in places infested with alligators.
3. OF bescuit (mod. biscuit). Pronounce the word in French: biscuit < twice
baked < bis + coctus, (past
participle of coquere, to
cook).
4. OF boudin (in modern French boudin = blood sausage) originally meant a sausage-like
preparation made with animal’s stomach or intestine stuffed with meat.
The mispronounced French boudin
gave, in Middle English, poding, puddyng, the sweet dessert that we call in English pudding. Take this as an example of perfect culinary
misunderstanding between the two countries.
5. Old Provençal croustado, which was a kind a pie baked in a oven, gave
Middle English crustade, which
evolved – in philology, lazyness oblige – into custard; a second example of culinary misundersanding!
6. OF cabouche, meaning head, modern familiar French caboche, close to Spanish cabeza, gave the word cabbage, which is what a cabbage sometimes looks like.
7. OF chaudière
gave our famous New England chowder. Here is a quote from Wilfred Funk’s book, Word
Origins and their Romantic Stories
“In the little villages of Brittany, on the northwestern coast of France,
it has long been the custom for each fisherman to toss a bit of his catch into
a common mess of fish and biscuit that cooks in a community pot or chaudière. This dish was so good that its fame spread to
Newfoundland and so to the east coast of the United States, and the name of the
pot was soon applied to the contents, and the spelling chaudière was restyled as chowder.” (p. 187)
8.
OF pocher, gave the
word poach, i.e.
“in a pocket.”When you poach an egg you are cooking the yolk in a
“bag” or “pocket” of white. Poach is
from the OF pocher, “to
enclose in a bag,” which is derived from poche, a “bag” or “poke.”
Here’s where we get the old saying “buying a pig in a poke.”
9. OF saisonner
> seasoning. The primary
meaning of saisonner was
“to render palatable by the influence of the seasons: that is, by letting
fruit ripen until it is tasty. Right in line with seasoning, our words sauce,
salad, and sausage come from the Latin term salsus which means “salted,” for they needed
“salt’ to make the grade.
10. OF vyn egre >
vinegar is
nothing more than “sour wine”.
MINI-BIBLIOGRAPHY
Word Origins &
their Romantic Stories. Wilfred Funk, Funk & Wagnalls,
1950.
The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of English Etymology. T.F.
Hoad, Oxford University Press,1986.
Histoires de mots:
Étymologies européennes. Louis-Jean Calvet,
Paris: Payot, 1993.
L’aventure
des langues en occident: Leur origine, leur histoire, leur géographie.
Henriette Walter, Paris:
Laffont, 1994.
1. http://globegate.utm.edu/french/globegate_mirror/etymol.html
“Our hundreds of
French etymology resources are of several kinds. I have grouped those treating
a group of words with those that discuss aspects of etymology in one section,
and those focusing on a single word in another. They are of uneven scientific
value and quality, some written for popular consumption, some to illustrate a
particular kind of origin, while others are very complete articles, replete
with examples of early use. This page is appropriately attached to Globe-Gate's
Une Histoire de la langue française @ Globe-Gate .”
2. http://www.westegg.com/etymology/
Etymologically
speaking: “What follows is a list of some curious word origins. Some
of these are English, but some are French and German words from which we get
some English words.”
3.
http://www.wilton.net/etyma1.htm
Wilton's
Etymology Page (from America to Yankee)
4. http://www.takeourword.com/
Melanie & Mike say
“Take Our Word for it”- the Weekly Word-origin Webzine
Joseph E. Garreau, Ph.D.
http://faculty.uml.edu/jgarreau Professor
of French
Department
of Languages