English words lifted from French
A lot of words in English trace their roots to French. Government, adventure, courage, leisure: the roots of these words existed in French before they migrated to English. But English also takes some words directly from French. That means, the spelling is the same, the pronunciation is almost the same, and there may even be accent marks—something we don’t otherwise have in English.
So in today’s story, we’ll review some French words that have made it into English.
Fiancé / fiancée
Let’s start with one of the most unusual words that English takes directly from French: fiancé. Use this word when you are engaged to be married. The person you have promised to marry is your fiancé(e). Hopefully, you won’t have a fiancé for long. Before you get engaged, you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a partner. After you’re married, you have a husband, a wife, or a spouse. But during that year or so after you get engaged but before you get married, you have a fiancé(e).
This word is unusual for two reasons. First, English does not have accent marks, but when we write fiancé in English, it is correct to put the accent mark on the first “e,” just like in French.
Fiancé(e) is also unusual because it’s one of the very few gendered words in English. If you’re engaged to marry a man, you have a fiancé, with one “e.” But if you’re engaged to marry a woman, you have a fiancée with two “e’s.”
I can think of just two other words in English that behave like this. If you’re an experienced person and you’re teaching someone younger or junior to you, that other person is your protégé(e). And like “fiancé(e),” “protégé(e)” is often spelled with accent marks and an additional “e” for females.
And if you’re divorced, you would be a divorcé(e), also with an extra “e” if you’re female.
Façade
Speaking of accents, the next French word to learn today is “façade.” A façade is the front, or the face of a building. For example, when teams were restoring Notre Dame cathedral, they cleaned the façade and replaced any damaged limestones. They did this work on the part of the building that you see from the outside: that’s the façade.
This is an interesting word because this is one of the only words with a cedilla, the squiggly line beneath the “c.” This is a marking we don’t use in English, either. But we do often use it with the word façade.
Many people will spell it “facade” with just a regular “c.” I’ve even seen it spelled that way in books and magazines in recent days. But it’s just as common to see it with the cedilla.
Resume / Résumé
Here’s a curious thing. We have some words in English that come straight from French, but their meanings in English are the not the same as their meanings in French.
“Résumé” is one of them. In French, this means “summary.” But in English, it specifically refers to a document that summarizes your work experience and education. In many parts of the world, including in France, this document is referred to as a “C.V.” or “curriculum vitae,” a word borrowed from Latin.
And C.V. is sometimes used in English. But in North America, we most often call it a résumé. The dictionary allows two spellings: the traditional spelling has an accent on both “e’s,” (résumé) but it’s also acceptable to write it with no accent marks at all (resume).
Matinée
If you’re unemployed and you’ve just sent your résumé off to a potential employer, you might find yourself with a free afternoon. If that’s the case, you might want to catch a matinée. We English speakers have changed the meaning of matinée, just like we changed the meaning of résumé.
In French, matinée means “morning.” But in English, a matinée is a daytime performance or a daytime show, usually in the afternoon.
You can use “matinée” with movies or live performances like plays, musicals, or operas. Here’s how you might use it. If a friend invites you to the movies on Saturday, you might say, “I’d love to go, but I can’t stay out too late. Can we go to a matinée?” That means, “can we go to the movies during the day, and not at night?”
Theaters often have matinées on the weekends. They might have live performances at 7:00 p.m. during the week, and then a matinée on Sunday. Some theaters might have a double performance on Saturday: they might do a matinée at 2:00 and then an evening performance at 8:00.
You can say “matinée performance” or “matinée show”, but it’s usually enough to simply say “a matinée” and people will know what you mean.
A few more
Here are a few more, quickly. If you do something wrong, something socially unacceptable, you commit a “faux pas.” If you wear jeans to a meeting and everyone else is in business dress—that’s a faux pas.
An “encore” is a second performance. If you’re at a concert, the band stops playing, everyone cheers: they want to hear one or two more songs. The band may come out for an encore. That’s an additional performance.
Ever get the sense that you’re living through a moment that you’ve experienced before? If so, you’ve experienced déjà vu. We write that with accent marks on the “e” and the “a.”
A cliché is an overused phrase; often, a cliché started as a common phrase but became so commonly used that people tire of hearing it. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is an example of a cliché. That’s a French word, too.
A “coup” is an overthrow of the government. In French, they say, “coup d’etat” and you can say “coup d’etat” in English, too. But it’s enough to simply say “coup;” that means the same thing. A “boardroom coup” is when the board of directors of an organization fires the CEO and replaces him or her with someone new.
If you have a meeting or an appointment with someone, you might say you have a rendezvous. This is part of a very famous quote in American history. In 1936, then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to raise American’s spirits during the Great Depression when he said, “This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” That is a famous, famous quote.
Hungry? You might sauté some vegetables and beef. That means you put it in a frying pan with just a little bit of oil. And just before eating, it’s very, very common in English to say, “bon appétit.”
Jeff’s take
Just a quick note on the accent marks. Most English keyboards don’t have a way to enter accent marks. On a computer, you can usually insert them from the menus in Microsoft Word or find the keyboard shortcut on the web.
If you’re on Windows, there’s a keyboard setting called English-International, which lets you enter accent marks using other keys on the keyboard, but most native English speakers don’t know how to use this.
A lot of them don’t even know how to enter an accent mark at all. And so it’s very common for these French words to be written without their accent marks in emails and informal documents.
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