Monday, August 17, 2015

French words of the day: de rigeur; memoir; milieu; resistance; unique

Collecting French words for me is d e  r i g e u r. (I need to divide up the word to prevent the predictive text / spell check from covering the word into rigour.)  I shall note French words and count them for my memoir.

amateur - not professional, inept
brogue - kind of walking shoe
coiffure - hairstyle
critique - article criticising or rather judging the good and bad aspects of whatever is being reviewed
de r i g eur - obligatory
espionage - spying
memoir - memories - written as a selection of related incidents from one's life, usually on a theme (memoir of restaurants / religious experiences) or from your career ( for example, My life an an actor / space traveller). Or a time (for example, my life as a student in the Sixties) and /or a place (San Francisco in the Nineties).
longeur - over long and tedious
milieu - for example middle class milieu - surroundings, atmosphere
passé - out of date / dated / past its sell by date, no longer fashionable
Resistance - French Resistance against German occupation in WWII
piece de resistance - finest work, usually artistic such as a best novel or play or painting or the last song of a concert
surveillance - clandestine watching
unique - one of a kind
fille unique - only child

I used to teach English and occasionally French.
Angela Lansbury, B A Honours, author, speaker.

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