Wordnik.com: Loan words from French: Comments

Comment by seanahan, 10 months ago

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:01:35 +0000

Looking up the etymologies, village is French and town is English, which is about what I expected here.

Comment by BrainyBabe, 11 months ago

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:12:17 +0000

My intention was to gather words that are recognisably French, not those that have been fully digested and absorbed into colloquial English, as for instance "entrepreneur" has been. ("The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.")

One sign of the word's relatively recent welcome into English would be, as with gite, that Anglophones make an effort to use French pronunciation.

Comment by rolig, 11 months ago

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:06:13 +0000

I assume you are mainly interested in recent borrowings, from the last two hundred years or so, and not those that go back to the Norman Conquest, which would be a hefty chunk of the vocabulary of Modern English.

Comment by taciturnyetprolix, 11 months ago

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:31:24 +0000

Is it fair to call them "loan" words? Is the anglophone world going to have to give these words back to the French, with interest?

Comment by whichbe, 11 months ago

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:39:38 +0000

Oh, well, I don't remember where I got that from. Feel free to remove it.

Comment by BrainyBabe, 11 months ago

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:31:54 +0000

"Village"? Really? I don't see it, myself.