On a recent road trip across the entire country, friend Greg Casaletto and I began discussing the French language and its use in modern American English. Meanwhile Kevina was asleep in the back and Tennessee became the longest state EVER.
I enlisted the help of writer friend, Alma Khasawnih, speaker of French (among like a million other languages) and appreciator of word usage. And together we came up with this list in no particular order:
- Soirée
- Savoir faire
- Decor
- Chic
- Cliché
- Reservoir
- Repertoire
- Negligee
- Rendezvous
- Petite
- Expose’
- Voyeur
- Saute’
- Rapport
- Couture
- Coup d’etat
- Passé (contributed today via Greg via NPR’s French Correspondent Eleanor Beardsley)
When Alma mentioned ‘cliché’ and I said, “Oooooooo that is the best one!” Greg and I learned of our differing opinions of what makes a word better than another in this game. My basis for thinking that some of these words were more useful than the others was if they served such a purpose that there was not really an American English equivalent to the word. Example: I suppose you could replace the word ‘cliché’ with ‘overused’ but the two are not exactly synonymous. One would need more than just the word overused to define ‘cliché’.
Greg’s decision about whether or not these were good examples of what we were hoping to accomplish by this was the amount that these words are used in modern American English. How often they show up and how commonly they are utilized. Or as Greg says, “If it is actually used by modern people basically.”
The moral of the story is: Driving across the country takes a really long time. So take smart people with you so that you can brush up on your French American English.
The Clark Collection 