French words of the day for fun: provocateur, secateur

Provocateurs are people who provoke and secateurs are devices which cut (garden plants).

French words ending with e u r are pronounced err, rhyming with amateur. You might think this is obvious, but I've heard speakers in Singapore pronounce the words which end in e u r like manure, or demure. the first letter, the e, is the one which drives the pronunciation. Amateur.

agent provocateur - agent working to provoke reaction by a political enemy
amateur - novice, somebody who does something as a hobby, not as paid work. (Important in competitions where you must maintain amateur status by not taking paid work.)
chauffeur - professional driver (also used humorously, eg "I chauffeur the children to school and ballet lessons.")
provocateur - person who provokes, or sets out to provoke, to get a reaction
raconteur -a  speaker telling or recounting long, amusing stories
secateur - heavy scissors for cutting garden plants, usually with a safety catch and heavy curved blades

c o i f f e u r - smart hairdresser
c o n n o i s s e u r - expert, usually one who seeks out the luxurious or best foods, antiques or goods.

Let's make up a sentence using several to practise the pronunciation.
The agent provocateur set out with the secateurs and instructed the chauffeur to driver to the coiffeur. Fortunately he was an amateur.

Angela Lansbury B A Hons, CL, ATG, English and French teacher, tutor, speech coach.

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passé - out of date / dated / past its sell by date, no longer fashionable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.