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Five common words inherited from sport

2021-10-19T05:10:39.226Z


"Remontada", "transfer window" ... Le Figaro returns to this sporting lexicon which has interfered in our language.


Sport is a French affair.

It suffices, on match or World Cup nights, to observe the French to realize this.

Witness the hordes of supporters who meet to comment on the event, explode with joy in case of victory, or lament in case of failure, calling the opposing team the worst names of birds.

The French language also illustrates our love for sport: it is populated with words and expressions borrowed from it.

This vocabulary has crept into the public and political domain.

Our leaders, to better acquire their audience, use sporting metaphors over and over again.

Selected pieces.

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● The "transfer window"

Here is a word which has perfectly found its place in everyday language.

Borrowed from the same Italian word which means

"market"

, it originally belongs to the lexicon of football to designate the

"transfer market"

, as the Larousse specifies, that is to say the periods of the year. where players are transferred from one team to another.

From now on, he is regularly employed in the audiovisual field.

We thus speak of the

“big transfer window for television hosts”

.

● The "remountada"

The overwhelming success of this word is undeniable. It is all the rage in the headlines: such and such a candidate or party is experiencing a

“spectacular comeback”

. Recently, the newspaper Liberation headlined one of his portraits: “Presidential: Montebourg candidate for the

“ remountada ”

against and against the rest of the left”. The Socialist candidate then called for a

"reassembly of France"

. This word comes from Spanish and means

"ascent"

, or

"return"

. It designates the

"unexpected rise in score allowing the losing team to take victory in a football match, when there was a large difference in points between the two teams"

, reports the Larousse.

Today, he qualifies more broadly the

"return to the foreground, spectacular victory of a party or a politician, after an electoral defeat, a crossing of the desert, etc."

"Running a marathon"

This formula no longer designates exclusively those courageous people who lead a long-distance running event.

It has become dazzlingly popular in our daily lives, and illustrates the influence of sport in the way we speak.

We speak of the

"Brussels marathon on agricultural negotiations"

, or the

"marathon of job interviews"

, to refer to a long and difficult ordeal.

This word comes to us from the name of

Marathon

, locality of Attica, where in 490 before J.-C,

"the Greeks gained a victory over the Persians, and from where left a soldier who died of exhaustion after a long race. , on his arrival in Athens, announcing the news ”

, we read in the thesaurus.

"To be neck and neck"

"The two candidates come neck to neck in the polls"

,

"union neck and neck"

, are formulas that are flourishing.

This expression was formed after the

"elbow"

, which designates

"two runners elbow to elbow"

, who follow each other very closely in their race.

By extension, it also qualifies as

"mutual support, solidarity"

, underlines the Larousse.

It is also used to describe nearly equal people who follow each other very closely in a competition.

● "Send back to the ropes"

Imagine two boxers.

One sends a formidable hook to his opponent and sends him waltzing

"into the ropes"

which encircle the

"ring"

, knocking him down.

This is the origin of this formula which extended to the common language.

It properly means

"to put someone in his place"

.

Its variant of

"returning to its goals"

, which relates to football, means the same thing.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-19

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