French history

the devil's hot-bed

spies, romance, and hot beds

contemporary romance

Fish, cheese, war

various mongers, and, of course, romance novels

French history

And yet they were surprisingly moderate

The Black Jacobins, revolution, romance, and horror

French history

Octidi 18 Nivôse

CALENDAR, n. Timely, right? I looked this word up for reasons that will become clear below, but I figured the first newsletter of January was a great moment to tell you about it. We get “calendar,” meaning the way we organize our months and years (as in “the Gregorian calendar”

expressions

Following nature

SECOND NATURE, expr. I was listening to a song of this title recently and it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what this phrase meant. Sure, sure, something that “is/comes as/feels like second nature” is instinctive or effortless, but shouldn’t that be first nature?

animal words

Gerfaunts and orafles

GIRAFFE, n. This word, referring to the long-necked, spotted African mammal, comes to English through French, where it used to be spelled “giraffe” but is now spelled “girafe,” and in either case its origin is Arabic zarāfa. Before English settled on “giraffe,” we used to call these animals camelopards, gerfaunts,

French literature

Gender outlaws

COPE, v. A reader recently asked me about the use of “cope”and “full of matter” in these lines of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at the end of Act II, scene 1: DUKE SENIOR And did you leave him in this contemplation? SECOND LORD We did, my lord,

French literature

The OG Cathedral

OGEE, n., adj. and OGIVE, n., adj. I first heard the word “ogee” while taking a class about Gothic art and architecture in college, and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I couldn’t parse it at all. I remember thinking, “Surely my extremely upper-crust white British art

food words

Get on top

CREAM, n. We had to buy cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate) recently, and my beloved pointed out that the “cream” in cream of tartar must have an interesting etymology; it’s not the fatty part of milk, so why is it called “cream”? My first thought was that perhaps potassium

French literature

False cities and restorations

FAUBOURG, n., RESTAURANT, n. A good way to make yourself sad during a pandemic—not that we have a shortage! and admittedly this sadness is trivial and selfish—is to read a book about a city you can’t travel to that lists restaurants you couldn’t safely eat inside

art history

Heat and steam

CALORIFÈRE, n. This is an old-timey French word that means “heater,” which I was able to guess because I married a chemist who sometimes says words like “calorimeter”—a device that measures heat in chemical reactions—and also because “calor/e” is Latin/Spanish/Italian for heat. I have nothing

art history

Furbelows and dandies

FURBELOW, n. I’ve been reading Valerie Steele’s Paris Fashion: A Cultural History and J. A. Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Du Dandysme et de G. Brummell (usually called The Anatomy of Dandyism in English) as research for the romance novel I’m writing that is set in nineteenth-century Paris,

French literature

Reading societies

LESEGESELLSCHAFT, n. I have no business talking about German words in this newsletter, as I do not speak German (and some of you do!), but I love a long German word. One of my favorite professors, whenever he veered into a topic he didn’t have a degree in, would

classical antiquity

Lictors

LICTOR, n. This word might come from Latin “ligare,” meaning “to bind,” and it indicates a soldier who worked as a bodyguard for a magistrate in ancient Rome. “Lictor” has been on my mind this week because I read Tamsyn Muir’s bonkers lesbian-necromancers-in-space novel Harrow the Ninth, whose prequel

French history

Coup de

COUP, n. I know, I know—sorry. Sometimes the news is just inescapable. But at least this word, which has been all over US politics twitter lately (and also, I assume, Peru politics twitter, though granted I don’t see much of that), is a fascinating one. In English we

food words

Ladies can have little a ham sandwich, as a treat

DÉJEUNER, n., v. This French word, déjeuner, is made up of the same morphemes (units of meaning) as its English counterpart, breakfast. In French, the verb jeuner means “to fast” and dé- is a negative prefix, much like de- in English (defrost, debunk, decipher, etc.). So déjeuner is to de-fast,

animal words

Not all rats are kings

RAT KING, n. This newsletter has discussed etymologies related to foxes, butterflies, lobsters, and dogs, and this week, it’s all about rats—or rather, rat kings. A rat king, in case you are blessed not to know this, is a bunch of rats knotted together by their tails or

animal words

They know the secrets of the sea and do not bark

LOBSTER, n. Okay, since the etymology for “butterfly” was so rewarding, I wanted to check out some other animal words. For “lobster,” Bon Appétit is on the case and I’m just gonna share a chunk of their article because it’s wonderful: …the Ancient Romans went for concision: their

French history

Gardens and cemeteries

NAPOLÉON, n. Here’s a word with all sorts of meanings, very different in French and English. If you say “napoleon,” you might be talking about * Napoléon B(u)onaparte, AKA Napoléon, AKA Napoléon le Grand, AKA Boney,* a Corsican soldier who rose up in the French military to become

French history

An addendum

The newsletter I just sent out was supposed to include this image of Jacques-Louis David’s famous 1793 painting The Death of Marat, but I was in a hurry and forgot it. Here you can see Marat, stabbed in his bathtub, and possibly the drapery in the painting is the

animal words

The Fantastic Mr. Renard

RENARD, n. This is how you say “fox” in French. It’s not what you’d expect from the Latin, where the word for “fox” is variously spelled vulpes, vulpis, volpes, and provides the source of English vulpine, which means “related to foxes” and also “crafty, cunning.” Old French did

number words

Nineteen ninety-six

NONANTE, n. This is a variation on the (France) French way to say “ninety,” instead of quatre-vingt-dix (for those who have not studied French, that’s literally four-twenty-ten). It comes directly from Latin nonaginta. Nice and logical. It’s not even phonologically exciting: we fully expect that word-final a to

French history

Glorious bastillards

EMBASTILLER, v. French literally has a verb that means “to imprison in the Bastille.” Originally it meant “to surround [a city, a place] with fortifications (bastilles),” but it came to refer to holding someone the famous prison in Paris. By extension, it can also be used to indicate putting someone

French history

Pro patria or pro-patois

First, and most importantly, a Greek-speaking friend shared with me after last week’s discussion of “metaphor” that Greek moving vans say metaphores on them, because they’re transferring stuff from one place to another, which is so great. PATOIS, n. There’s a saying in linguistics that “a language