Solecisms, slip-ups, confusions ... Very clever who prides himself on never making these little mistakes.
The French language is a pernicious old lady.
It is populated with traps, which sometimes turn out to be explosive!
One letter less, one vowel too much, and here is our word dispossessed of its meaning.
We then complain about
“crude” people
, we rejoice in the
“reopened”
restaurants
and we think about an
“entrepreneurial” plan
.
However, these terms, although sympathetic, do not exist.
"Vicious expressions"
,
"gross mistakes in language, use of forged or distorted words"
, barbarisms have a leather of steel.
Selected pieces.
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"He lacks serenitude"
This is a word that does not lack creativity.
But who would heat Molière's ears if he was still in this world.
"Independence of mind, freedom of judgment, of opinion"
,
"serenity"
is too pretty a word to get rid of it in this way.
Borrowed from the Latin
serenitas
,
"serenity of the sky"
, it is used in the Middle Ages to designate
"the state of a soul free from turmoil and agitation."
"Are you the number one on the list?"
While high school and college students panic over their exam results and wonder about their respective rankings, the question is booming.
The opportunity to recall that the word
"third" ...
is not one.
Absent from the dictionary of the French Academy, it appears however in Le Robert, which immediately specifies that it is
"familiar, faulty."
We always prefer to say
"the, the date"
, more punished and fair.
"The cafes have reopened"
Yes, this verb comes naturally to us in the mouth.
We heard it, said, repeated and repeated at the time of the deconfinement and the reopening (and not
“reopening”
) of these public places that we had missed so much.
Is this a side effect of the jubilation that has taken hold of the country?
Still, that
"in the neat term, particularly in writing, employing
open
and not
reopen
"
, says the Larousse.
"If you allow me this disgression"
We have the name of the culprit. The one who makes us regularly commit this confusion. The French Academy falls to the Latin root of the word:
disgressio
. As the sages explain,
"the prefix
dis
belongs to the Latin language and to the French language."
While it retains its original form most of the time, it is common in Latin
"for the s of
dis- to be
erased when the initial consonant of the word to which it is linked is a sonorous consonant."
This is why the Latin word
disgressio
, composed with the help of the particle
dis
(which marks the negation or the gap), and of
gradi
,
"to walk, to advance"
, has become
digressio
.
And this is also why we frequently say
disgression
, instead of
digression.
"He had his panegeria for an hour!"
Borrowed from the Latin
panegyricus
,
"laudative"
, whose Greek root
panê-gurikos
means
"which concerns a national holiday"
, the word meant during Antiquity "a public speech in praise of a person."
Praise, emphatic and laudatory speech, he also designated a
“slanderous speech”
in the 17th century.
This elegant term is frequently cut from one letter in favor of another.
The error is understandable.
Where to put it, that damn
"y"
?
Instead of the second
“e”
, which has no place here.
We say
“panegyric”
and not
“panegyric”
.
"It's intrasec"
Here is a nice word that it is regrettable to scratch the surface.
"Interior"
,
"intimate"
,
"the most intimate period of hearts"
, that is what is
"intrinsic"
.
And not
"intrasec"
.
The word comes from the scholastic Latin
intrinsecus,
taken from the Latin adverb
intrinsecus
, that is to say
“inside, inside”
.
For this word again, the error is explicable.
"Intra"
is a Latin word meaning
"inside"
.
This explains this frequent confusion.
"Your words cannot be heard"
Red fire. The adjective
“audible”
is used here. It corresponds to the verb
"to hear"
, and comes from the Christian Latin
audibilis
, itself derived from
audire
,
"to hear"
. No doubt we form this word, wrongly, on the same model as the couples
"believable / credible"
and
"drinkable / drinkable"
, which have the same meaning. Let's get rid of that ghost word that has no place in our conversation.