What is the connection between an individual sliding on the snow with snowshoes and a person with a pronounced taste for gaolism? Answer: the adjective “scaldy”. Does this seem weird to you? I assure you: your reaction is completely natural. Only a dive into the history of the French language allows us to understand how we went from the first meaning of this word to its current meaning.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE THIS NEWSLETTER? >> Click here
It all begins with the arrival of the Vikings in Normandy, which the King of France Charles the Simple will eventually abandon to them in order to have peace. The men of the North came with their longships, their weapons, but also their Norse vocabulary, including the word “skidila”, “sliding on snow with snowshoes”. Little by little, the form and meaning of this skidila evolve and the term designates a “criminal who lies in wait for passers-by”, in allusion to the “lively movements of the thief appearing and disappearing unexpectedly”, explains the Historical dictionary of the French language. Then, from the 17th century, we find it in the form of “egrillard” to evoke “an alert, lively or free-living person”, before moving on to the idea of a “dexterous, alert, cunning man “. And this is how we ended up arriving at its current meaning: “Who likes jokes and ribald remarks” (Larousse). Phew!
“Egrillard” is not the only word in the French language to have profoundly changed its meaning over time. Here are other examples, whose developments are even more striking since they mean today… the opposite of what they originally meant!
Augustian. What is an “Augustian” in 2024? A person who takes vacation in August. Who was called “Augustian” at the end of the 19th century? A person who… stayed in Paris in August. Truthful !
Crudivore. With the rise of ecological concerns, a certain number of French people are adopting a diet based on the consumption of raw foods. They are called “crudivores”. Logic ? No way. Until the beginning of the 19th century, a raw foodist was in fact a lover of… raw meat, a fierce person, a voracious person, a carnivorous person. In short, the exact opposite of a vegetarian.
Irritated. Until the 19th century, this adjective meant “deprived of nerves”. In natural sciences, in my time, high school students practiced, for example, “enervation” of the frog’s sciatic nerve. Nevertheless, the reflex gesture remained: by pricking the animal’s nerve, the leg continued to bend. Hence the evolution of meaning: little by little, people who reacted like the frog were described as “angry”. And this is how an individual deprived of energy became an irritated, exasperated, exhausted person. In other words: someone who no longer controls their nerves.
Strike. Evil tongues say that RATP and SNCF agents spend more time striking than working. Backbiting, of course. On the other hand, if these companies had existed in the Middle Ages, such an accusation would never have been made, for a simple reason: going on strike then meant… asking for work. In Paris, it was indeed customary for workers seeking to hire out their labor to go near the current Town Hall, in the hope of finding an employer. The “strike”, in this case the sand and gravel beach on the banks of the Seine, served in a way as France Travail avant la lettre.
Nothing. Did you know ? For a long time, the word “nothing” meant “something”! It is because it was mainly used in negative sentences – “there is nothing” in the sense of “there is not something” – that it ended up taking on the meaning that we give it. know. The word, in fact, comes from Latin “rem” which means “thing”. “By dint of appearing in the vast majority of cases in negative statements, it ended up being entirely contaminated by the meaning of negation,” underlines André Thibault, professor at the Sorbonne. We don’t pay attention to it, but the evolution is considerable. It’s a bit as if, by saying “it’s not hot”, “hot” ends up meaning “cold”…
Suspicious. A particularly suspicious person is today described as “suspicious” and this seems natural to us. Except that, in the 14th century, “suspicious” meant on the contrary “which arouses suspicion”.
And if you don’t understand anything anymore, that’s no reason to get upset.
FIND VIDEOS DEDICATED TO FRENCH AND THE LANGUAGES OF FRANCE ON my youtube channel
READ ELSEWHERE
Lorraine Airport condemned to become Lorraine Aéroport
“Does it sell more or less? I don’t know,” the general director of the airport located between Metz and Nancy himself admits in an interview with Figaro. However, the Association francophonie Avenir (Afrav) had to take legal action to force this public establishment to respect the Toubon law and change its name. A case that could set a precedent.
In 2024, your phone will be able to translate your exchanges in real time
Samsung promises: from 2024, the integration of artificial intelligence on its next Galaxy phone will allow speakers of two different languages to understand each other immediately, via real-time audio and textual translation. To be judged on the evidence.
Quebec’s new requirements to protect French worry businesses
Several companies have ceased their activities in Quebec due to the adoption last year of a law strengthening French language requirements. In particular, companies must draft contracts, job offers, invoices and delivery documents in French. According to local employers, these measures, seen as “bureaucratic red tape”, could ultimately have a negative effect on the Quebec economy.
This version was relayed by numerous media. In reality, the refusal of the Drôme prefecture relates to the nature of the documents provided by the couple in order to justify their level of French and not to their level of French itself.
Philippe Pratx pays homage to holorime
“Gal, lover of the queen, went, magnanimous tour / Gallantly from the arena to the Magne tower, in Nîmes”
You will have noticed: these two verses by Marc Monnier rhyme from start to finish, hence their name “holorhyme verses” – from the Greek “holos”, “whole, complete”. In the past, Victor Hugo, Jacques Prévert and Alphonse Allais indulged in it, as did, in a different style, Philippe Geluck (“My wife starves me”). It is based on this principle, theorized by the writer Raymond Roussel, that Philippe Pratx has written eight stories, one of which has the Molac law on regional languages as a background.
Ὅλοι [holoï]. Rousselian holorime stories, by Philippe Pratx (Ed. Le Coudrier).
Alan Stivell: “Bilingual signs are not enough!“
Alan Stivell, one of the major figures of Breton cultural renewal, is convinced: it is still possible to save Breton culture, but we will not achieve it with measures. “For the Breton language to survive, it must become an official language. Otherwise, we are in palliative care. And that is exactly what is happening, he explains in an interview with the site Current Brittany. We managed to have bilingual signs, which was utopian a few years ago. We should be happy about it, but move on to other steps.”
“Being Breton is not a matter of skin color”
To celebrate its 60th anniversary, The Breton people, magazine of the Breton Democratic Union (UDB), displayed on its cover a photo of a child of color in traditional costume. A choice which triggered numerous racist comments. “Being Breton is not a matter of skin color, it is first and foremost a matter of a feeling of belonging,” replied the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Gael Briand.
A literary competition in Occitan for the Bayonne festivals
We often forget it, but the city of Bayonne is also of Gascon culture. For this reason, the competition nicely titled “Basque is the feather”, organized on the occasion of the city’s festivals and until now reserved for the Basque and French languages, opens this year to Occitan (in all its variants) with two categories: “adults” and “high school students”. Texts must be submitted before February 11.
Learning Provençal in Aix is possible… and it’s free
Under the auspices of the city of Aix-en-Provence, two hours of Provençal lessons are given free of charge every Wednesday, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., by Annie Bergèse. Information from Oustau de Prouvènço, Jourdan park, 04-42-26-23-41.
TO WATCH
He defends French in Louisiana
Jourdan Thibodeaux is from Louisiana and is fighting to protect the French language in this American state which only has 100,000 French speakers, compared to 1 million in the 1960s. A moving testimony in favor of a minority language in the United States.
REACT, DEBATE AND FIND MORE INFORMATION ON THE LANGUAGES OF FRANCE ON the Facebook page dedicated to this newsletter.
.