A pseudo-French expression in English is a word or expression in English that has the appearance of having been borrowed from French, but which in fact was created in English and does not exist in French. Several
such French expressions have found a home in English. The first continued in its adopted language in its original obsolete form centuries after it had changed its form in national French:
*''
bon viveur ''Bon viveur'' is an English pseudo-French expression denoting someone who enjoys the good things in life, especially food and drink.
It may also refer to:
* A pseudonym used jointly by writers Johnnie Cradock and Fanny Cradock
Phyllis Nan Sor ...
'' – the second word is not used in French as such,
while in English it often takes the place of a fashionable man, a sophisticate, a man used to elegant ways, a man-about-town, in fact a ''bon vivant''
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epergne
An epergne ( ) is a type of table centerpiece that is usually made of silver but may be made of any metal, glass or porcelain.
An epergne generally has a large central "bowl" or basket sitting on three to five feet. From this center "bowl" ra ...
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legerdemain
Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' ()) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card ...
'' (supposedly from, , literally, "light of hand") – sleight of hand, usually in the context of deception or the art of stage magic tricks.
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nom de plume
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
'' – coined in the 19th century in English, on the pattern of ''nom de guerre'', which is an actual French expression, where "nom de plume" is not.
Since the 1970s, ''nom de plume'' is accepted as a valid French expression even if some authors view it as a
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
of ''
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
''.
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voir dire
(; often ; from an Anglo-Norman phrase meaning "to speak the truth") is a legal phrase for a variety of procedures connected with jury trial
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a Trial, legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or Qu ...
'' – a legal phrase for a variety of procedures connected with jury trials.
See also
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Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
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False etymology
A false etymology (fake etymology, popular etymology, etymythology, pseudo-etymology, or par(a)etymology) is a popular but false belief about the origin or derivation of a specific word. It is sometimes called a folk etymology, but this is also a ...
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False cognate
False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engli ...
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False friend
In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
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Folk etymology
Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
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Glossary of French expressions in English
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Language transfer
Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual, from a mature sp ...
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Lexical borrowing
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List of pseudo-German words adapted to English
This is a list of pseudo-German words adapted from the German language in such a way that their meanings in English are not readily understood by native speakers of German (usually because of the new circumstances in which these words are used in ...
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Loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
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Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with Phonetics, phonetically and semantically similar words or ...
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Pseudo-anglicism
A pseudo-anglicism is a word in another language that is formed from English elements and may appear to be English, but that does not exist as an English word with the same meaning.
For example, English speakers traveling in France may be struck ...
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Semantic change
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from ...
References
{{English words of foreign origin
pseudo