How do French words like “cul-de-sac” and “hors d’oeuvres“ end up part of the English language without being translated to English words?

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How do French words like “cul-de-sac” and “hors d’oeuvres“ end up part of the English language without being translated to English words?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Cul-de-sac means “bag bottom” in French. As you can see, it looks and sounds much better untranslated. Especially when you are trying to sell houses.

“Hors d’oeuvres” similarly sounds more posh than “appetizers” or “starters”, and translates as something like “outside the main course”, which would be clumsy.

That said, there are such things as calques, which are words and expressions loaned from other languages and translated literally. Often you wouldn’t recognize them as such. English calques from French include “that goes without saying”, “point of view”, “flea market”, “by heart” and many other things.

Edit: Also Tolkien translated “cul-de-sac” as “Bag End” for his book, as a kind of an inside joke for philologists.

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