“His putative language dismays me a little more each day”
,
“the putative fault of the author of the embezzlement is unforgivable”
… Adjective whose consonance brings to what it designates a consequent scope if any, the The term “putative” today tends to drown out the meaning of the words of the person who uses it, as its use often turns out to be faulty.
Borrowed from the Latin “putativus” (from “putare”, “to think”, “to count”), “imaginary”, which in medieval Latin meant “supposed”, the word appears in the French language in the 14th century.
To discover
Crosswords, arrow words, 7 Letters... Free to play anywhere, anytime with the Le Figaro Games app
As the
Trésor de la langue française
indicates , “putative” then qualifies what is reputed to be what it is not.
Also, Balzac uses it in this sense when he writes in 1831:
“M.
Fonrouge, putative father of Lolo-Phiphi, declared that he did not recognize this child as resulting from his works, that he was only his adoptive father.
In law, the term designates what is supposed to have a legal existence.
A “putative marriage” therefore refers, to use the terms of the French Academy, to a marriage that each of the spouses would have contracted in good faith, producing legal effects until the decision striking it down.
Let's just say it's what it's supposed to be.
Putassier, impute
But then, having read the definitions previously quoted, what about the sentence:
“This putative behavior hurt my friend”
?
This is a bad job.
Indeed, given that a behavior has hurt a person, in other words that the fact is proven, it is not correct to say that it is assumed.
The person who formulated these words would probably have liked to use the colloquial term "putassier", almost homonymous, which refers to a solicitous behavior.
Read also“Eponymous book”: do not make the mistake anymore!
Likewise, it is wrong to say,
“The putative fault of the condemned is unpardonable.”
The author of the sentence, having probably committed this lexical oddity due to an almost identical pronunciation, wanted to talk about what is attributed to the subject (the condemned).
Namely a mistake.
And therefore of what is "imputed" to him.
If the subject of the sentence had not been the subject of a conviction, the fault in question could have been "putative", assumed.
However, it is not the case.
