They belong to another age, another era.
These words in the French language are no longer in use today.
They remind us of a time, a way of living and of speaking which had their auspicious period, before bowing out.
What if we decided to replace some of our everyday expressions with these pretty old-fashioned words?
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● "It appears that"
The formula
"it is clear that"
is used to confirm a statement, to agree with the meaning of its interlocutor.
In the 12th century, it was said:
"it appears that"
, formed from the pretty defective verb
"to appear"
.
Borrowed from the Latin
apparere
, it means:
"to appear, to be evident, manifest"
, according to the Trésor de la langue française.
We read it in Verlaine's, in his
posthumous works
:
"Above a city with peaceful roofs, At the windows from which life appears, calm and safe"
.
Isn't this lovely forgotten verb deliciously out of date?
● "Little matters to me", "little matters to me"
The language of young people is sometimes embellished with expressions to say the least ... flowery. For example,
“j'men balek”
, an elegant synonym for
“I don't care”
,
“I don't care”
. What if we relinquished it for the old-fashioned, but no less charming:
"little does not care"
(or
"little does not care"
)? The verb
"chaloir"
, disappeared from use, means
"to import"
, in the sense of
"to be important"
. It comes from the Latin
calere
, that is to say
"to be hot, to worry"
, reports the Larousse.
Remember, we have heard it many times as a child, when we were told the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and the wolf asked him to
"pull the peg and the bobbin will cherish"
.
● "Welcome your friends"
If it seems strange to the ear, this verb does exist in French
"To welcome someone favorably because he comes at the right time"
, as the CNRTL specifies,
"bienvenir"
is followed in the dictionary of the mention:
"literary, rare"
.
This is what makes its charm.
It is hardly used any more today, because largely replaced by its
“welcome”
twin
.
Know that we can therefore
“welcome someone”
, or
“welcome someone
”
, as Littré nicely wrote.
Léon Bloy uses it in
The Poor Woman
:
"Bohémond ended up fearing that he had made a mistake about the character and agreed to welcome him."
● "I am lying"
Let us return to an example borrowed from the language of adolescents.
The latter use the expression
"j'suis mort"
,
"j'suis dead"
(or
"tu m'as dead"
), or even
"j'suis en PLS"
, to signify that they are tired.
Let us abandon these formulas already heard a thousand times and replace it by:
"I lie"
, from the verb
"to lie down"
.
It means
"to be heard, lying down, unable to move (due to discomfort, injury, illness, or death)"
, we read in the TLFi.
This is the idea suggested by Gen'Z and X when they say they are
"dead"
...
● “Mire!”
"Mate"
,
"tima"
, or more soberly
"look!"
... There is no lack of interjections to attract a person's attention in French. The verb
"to mire"
is a synonym, more or less fallen into disuse. It literally means:
"to look attentively, to contemplate, to admire"
, from the Latin
mirari
,
"to be astonished, to be surprised"
hence:
"to look with astonishment, to admire"
. It can also be used to say
"aim (with a firearm)"
, informs the thesaurus, or
"examine something (against the light, to assess its quality)"
. It was used in the past to say:
"Look at your face, look at yourself with complacency in a mirror or in a reflective surface"
.
Figuratively, it designates the fact of
"reveling in something"
.
A myriad of meanings that call for re-employing this coquettish verb.