Is the French language possessive?
She jealously keeps certain words to herself, which cannot be used independently.
They only make sense today if they are used in an expression.
In the past, however, they were part of everyday language.
Anthology of these single-use words, which have become inseparable from idiomatic expressions.
● “Envy”
The adverb, which cannot be separated from the expression
"à l'envi"
, meant in Old French
"provocation"
.
It comes from the verbs
“to envy”
,
“to challenge”
, from the Latin
invitare
,
“to invite”
.
If these last two verbs are perfectly usable in everyday life,
"envi"
cannot be enough on its own.
The Robert, the Larousse and the Trésor de la langue française all note it with the preposition
“à”
.
"Envi"
is a literary phrase synonymous with:
"to whom better, as if they were competing with each other"
.
● "Shameless"
Used alone, this word is now obsolete.
It is now customary to use it only in the formula
"shamelessly"
, that is to say "brazenly, disrespectfully, shamelessly".
“ Shame
”
was once used as a synonym for
“modesty, restraint, modesty”
.
● "Luret"
Try putting this word in a sentence, and see what effect it produces.
The
"lurette"
is nowadays almost exclusively used with the adjective
"beautiful"
, as the CNRTL points out.
This colloquial term was formed by corruption of
Heurette
in the expression "
there is a beautiful hourtte
".
This last word is an Old French diminutive of
"hour"
.
The phrase, pretty and old-fashioned, has remained alive in different regions, especially in the North and in the East.
● “For”
We regret that we no longer use this word for itself.
What does the “for”
designate
in the expression
“internal forum”
?
In the 17th century, it was the name of a court of justice, a tribunal, according to the thesaurus.
We borrowed it from the classic Latin
forum
,
“public place, market”
through the old Gascon
for
,
“law, custom, privilege”
.
This is how the meaning we give to the expression
“internal forum”
was born.
The word has become synonymous with
"power, authority which the Church exercises over spiritual things"
.
Figuratively, the expression gradually designated the inner court, the judgment of conscience.
● "Diluvian"
"Heavy downpours fell last night"
.
The weather presenters know this sentence by heart.
In the past, we spoke of the
"diluvian navigator"
to designate what had to do with the deluge, or dated from the deluge: Noah for example, or thoughts, theories related to this event.
Derived from the Latin
diluvium
,
"deluge"
, the word is rarely used alone.
Note that Chateaubriand used it as an adjective (
“diluvied”
) to mean
“soaked, flooded like a deluge”
.