by Judy Jones
SUI GENERIS (SOO-ee-JEN-er-is): “Of its own kind.” Peculiar, unique, not to be analyzed or catalogued along standard lines.
TU QUOQUE (TOO-KWOH-kweh): “You also.” The ancient Roman version of “So are you.” A response to an accusation directed personally.
ULTRA VIRES (UL-trah-VEER-ayz): “Beyond (one’s) authority.” Also, outside one’s jurisdiction. It’s well known that several successive administrations behaved ultra vires in Vietnam.
FOUR LATIN PHRASES FOR YOUR DAY IN COURT
CORPUS DELICTI (KOR-pus-de-LIK-tee): “The body of the crime.” Tangible evidence of wrongdoing, including (but hardly restricted to) the body of a murder victim.
HABEAS CORPUS (HAY-bee-as-KOR-pus): “You have the body.” A writ requiring that a person being detained be brought before a judge; meant to guard against unfair imprisonment, it constitutes one of the most celebrated features of both the British and the American legal systems.
NOLLE PROSEQUI (NOL-leh-proh-SEK-wee): “To not wish to proceed.” Statement that the prosecution doesn’t want to pursue matters further; the writ ending court proceedings. Shortened to “nol-pros” by fast-talking lawyers.
NOLO CONTENDERE (NOH-loh-kon-TEN-der-eh): “I don’t want to fight.” Plea made by a defendant that’s equivalent to an admission of guilt (and that leaves him subject to punishment), but that allows him the legal option of denying the charges later.
AND FOUR FOR YOUR DAY OF JUDGMENT
DE PROFUNDIS (deh-pro-FUN-dees): “Out of the depths” of sorrow and despair, the first two words of Psalms 130 (and the title of a confessional essay by Oscar Wilde). An especially bitter cry of wretchedness.
ECCE HOMO (ek-keh-HOH-moh): “Behold the man,” the words first spoken by Pilate (John 19:5) when he showed Jesus, crowned with thorns, to the mob. A name given to paintings showing Christ thus, also to an essay by Nietzsche in which he announces that he’s the Antichrist.
NOLI ME TANGERE (NOH-lee-meh-TAN-geh-reh): “Touch me not,” the words spoken by Christ to Mary Magdalen after his Resurrection (John 20:17). A name given to paintings showing Christ thus; also, a person or thing that can’t be touched; a warning against getting involved or in the way.
NUNC DIMITTIS (nunk-deh-MIT-us): “Now lettest Thou (thy servant) depart,” the words Simeon speaks to Jesus, satisfied that he’d finally seen the Messiah (Luke 2:29). A name for that canticle, the “Song of Simeon”; by extension, any permission to go. To “sing nunc dimittis” is to express one’s readiness to depart or die. FROM PRUSSIA WITH LOVE
We promise: There simply aren’t that many German expressions for you—or any other non-German—to worry about. Of course, the ones that you do have to worry about tend to be a mouthful. Also, a skullful.
BILDUNGSROMAN (bil-DOONGS-row-MON): Literally, education novel. Tells the story of how somebody came of age, à la Pip in Dickens’ Great Expectations, Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, or Hans Castorp in Mann’s The Magic Mountain.
DOPPELGÁNGER (DOP-pul-GENG-er): “Double-goer,” the ghostly double, the spiritual (or sometimes flesh-and-blood) counterpart of a living person; as in the Poe story “William Wilson.”
GEMÜTLICHKEIT (guh-MOOT-lik-kite): From Gemüt, temperament, feeling. Implies geniality, coziness, a sense of shared well-being. The adjective form is gemütlich. Use sparingly: Can make you sound like your great-uncle Arthur.
GÖTTERDÄ4;MMERUNG (GUH-ter-DEHM-er-oong): “Twilight of the gods.” The last opera in Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle. Also, any terminal breakdown or tragic end, the louder the better.
LEBENSRAUM (LAY-bens-ROWM): “Living space.” A big part of Germany’s justification for its periodic invasions of its neighbors. Only slightly less convincing than our “manifest destiny.”
SCHADENFREUDE (SHAH-den-FROY-duh): “Harm joy.” You’ll enjoy this one; God knows, you’ve already enjoyed the feeling—the slightly malicious, slightly guilty pleasure you register at the news of someone else’s, and especially a friend’s, misfortune.
STURM UND DRANG (SHTURM-und-DRAHNG): “Storm and stress.” From a late-eighteenth-century German literary movement (centered on drama and involving, like so much else, Goethe and Schiller), a beat-your-breast, tear-your-hair-out reaction to pussyfooting French classicism. Now, any great emotional turmoil.
WELTANSCHAUUNG (VELT-ahn-SHAU-oong): “Worldview.” A philosophy of life, a comprehensive version of the whole enchilada, and how it works.
WELTSCHMERZ (VELT-schmertz): “World pain.” Ranges from a kind of sentimental pessimism or world-weariness to full-fledged distress and angst (a German noun so assimilated you don’t even have to capitalize it anymore).
WUNDERKIND (VOON-der-kind): “Wonder child.” The child prodigy, whether still a child (like Mozart when he first attracted serious attention), or already an adolescent (like Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane). The Wunderkind, whatever his age, really does compose, direct, or appear on talk shows brilliantly—unlike the enfant terrible, who’s too busy making trouble to pay much attention to the quality of his performance.
ZEITGEIST (TSITE-guyst): “Time ghost.” The spirit of the age, the taste and outlook of a period or a generation.
The Germans shot their wad with the nouns; their adjectives, by contrast, are short, to the point, and appealingly lowercase.
ECHT (EKKKT): Genuine, typical, the real thing. Echt Schwarzenegger would be, depending on your point of view, either Conan or Terminator.
ERSATZ (EHR-zahts): Substitute, artificial, not real. Ersatz Schwarzenegger might be Steven Seagal. (No need to set italic; now at home in English.)
VERBOTEN (fehr-BOHT-en): Forbidden, prohibited, don’t even think it. In a roomful of Schwarzenegger fans, it’s not crazy to assume that Merchant-Ivory would be verboten (no italics).
Enjoy these German words and phrases? Well, no need to pine for more. Instead, just turn to the following pages and find: Bauhaus (page 105), Realpolitik (page 596), Leitmotif (page 287), Ding-an-sich (page 320), Übermensch (page 325), Ostpolitik (page 366), Gestalt (page 456) and Ur- (page 639). A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF JE NE SAIS QUOI
The good news is, not as many French phrases have made it into Webster’s and the OED as Latin phrases. The bad news is, there are a lot more French than Latin ones that you—and everybody else with an ax to grind or an impression to make—are going to want in on. Following, organized into categories (and getting harder as you read on), our favorites among the still-numerous contenders, each of which was selected because it (a) has no easy and/or economical equivalent in English, and hence isn’t merely pretentious; (b) provides a glimpse of the notoriously agile, notoriously devious French mind at work, and hence isn’t merely academic; and (c) is more or less tricky in its meaning, form, or use, and hence isn’t merely self-evident, in which case we’d all have mastered it already, n’est-ce pas?
For the Freshman
BETE NOIRE (bet-NWAR): Literally, black beast; someone or something that one fears, dislikes, or characteristically avoids. Stronger than “pet peeve,” more graceful than “bugbear.” Note the e on noire.
DE RIGUEUR (de-ree-GUHR): Absolutely necessary; required by good form if nothing else. Two us in rigueur, a relative of our “rigor.”
FAIT ACCOMPLI (fet-a-kom-PLEE): Literally, accomplished fact; a thing already consummated, so that fighting it is useless, and changing it impossible.
PAR EXCELLENCE (par-ek-sel-AHNSE): Above all others of the same type; literally, by (virtue of its) excellence. Paris is the European capital par excellence.
RAISON D’êTRE (ray-zohn-DETR): “Reason for being.” Justification for one’s existence.
For the Sophomore
BON MOT (bohn-MOH): Not just a “good word,” but a witty remark, a memorable comment, an aphorism even. Come junior year, you’ll want to take on mot juste, the “just word,” the word that conveys what’s meant more precisely than any word anybody else in the dorm could come up with.
CARTE BLANCHE (kart-BLAHNS
H): “White paper,” a sheet that’s blank except for a signature, with the implication that its bearer can write his own deal. A blank check, yes, but also blanket permission.
COUP DE GRCE (koo-de-GRAHS): Literally, stroke of mercy; the death blow, delivered to someone mortally wounded. By extension, any finishing or decisive act. Watch that word coup, by the way; it’s a favorite of the French, and it shows up again in coup d’état, the sudden, and often violent, overthrow of a government, and coup de foudre, literally, lightning bolt; figuratively, love at first sight.
ENFANT TERRIBLE (ahn-fahnt-teh-REE-bl): “Terrible child”; can refer to your standard-issue brat or to anybody, typically a young artist or writer, who causes trouble and calls attention to himself through unconventional and boat-rocking behavior. Note: Not to be confused with Wunderkind.
PIÈCE DE RÉSISTANCE (pee-ess-de-ray-zee-STAHNS): From the sense of “resistance” as staying-power, endurance. By extension, something of substance, toughness, or strength. Not, as a lot of people seem to think, the crowning glory, the “capper” in a can-you-top-this sequence of items. At the dinner table, it’s the saddle of lamb—not the cherries jubilee—that is, or ought to be, the pièce de ré-sistance.
For the Literature Major
BELLES LETTRES (bel-LET-re): Serious literary writings—“beautiful letters”— more “artistic” than “intellectual,” especially essays and criticism, but including fiction, poetry, and drama. Today, tends to have connotations of the artificial, the effete, the old-fashioned, of Henry James as opposed to Henry Miller.
FIN DE SIÈCLE (fahn-de-see-EH-kl): “End of century,” specifically, the end of the nineteenth century, a period celebrated for its decadence in France (Verlaine, Mallarmé, Huysman, et al.) as in England (Wilde, Beardsley, et al.). Not surprisingly, the phrase is now being applied to the end of the twentieth century, too.
ROMAN à CLEF (roh-mahn-ah-KLAY): “Novel with key,” in which people and events have been fictionalized, with any luck tantalizingly
SUCCÈS D’ ESTIME (sook-say-des-TEEM): A success based on reviews (or, sometimes, respect for the author’s—or performer’s—reputation) rather than on sales, on “esteem” rather than popular enthusiasm. Cf succés de scandale, where the scandalousness, rather than the excellence, of the material is the come-on. Also, succés fou, a “mad” success, a smash hit.
TOUR DE FORCE (toor-de-FORS): “Turn of force,” a display of virtuosity, an exhibition of skill, often undertaken by an artist in a field not his own just to prove he can do it.
For the History Major
AGENT PROVOCATEUR (ah-ZHEN-proh-voh-ka-TUHR): For example: The undercover agent who infiltrates the trade union or political party, pretending sympathy with its aims, and gets the members to do precisely those things that they can be punished or put away for.
CORDON SANITAIRE (kor-DOHN-san-ee-TAYR): The line, generally heavily guarded, between an infected area and an adjacent, as-yet uninfected one. Applies likewise to the isolating of politically sensitive subject matter or of a state its neighbors consider dangerous.
éMINENCE GRISE (ay-mee-NEHNZ-GREEZ): The power behind the throne, the person who exercises his authority unofficially. Literally, “gray cardinal,” after Cardinal Richelieu’s private secretary, Père Joseph. Éminence, in case you’re wondering, is a cardinal’s honorific.
LÈSE-MAJESTÉ (lez-mah-zhes-TAY): An offense or crime against one’s ruler or sovereign; treason. More commonly, any presumptuous conduct or overstepping of authority. And that’s the same les- you see in “lesion,” ultimately from a Latin word meaning “to injure.”
NOBLESSE OBLIGE (noh-BLESS-oh-BLEEZH): “Noble birth obligates,” privilege entails responsibility. Point of honor (and raison d’etre) for aristocrats and other anden régime—or pre-Revolutionary, “former administration”—types.
At the Buffet Dinner
COMME IL FAUT (kohme-eel-FOH): “As is necessary”; used, sometimes slightly sarcastically, of behavior that is socially up to snuff. In introductions that are comme il faut, older people are introduced to younger ones and women to men, a little something or other said about each of them to the other, and all the rest of it.
DOUBLE ENTENDRE (DOO-bl-ahn-TAHN-dr): Literally, “to hear or to understand double”; in practice, a remark with a racy, spicy, off-color undertone as well as a flat, seemingly innocent surface meaning. Actually, the French themselves say double entente, but that’s their problem.
D’UN CERTAIN AGE (duhn-sayr-tehn-AHJ): Not as imprecise as “of a certain age”; means, in fact, middle-aged at least. Used euphemistically, but that doesn’t mean that afemme d’un certain age is, in the eyes of a Frenchman, necessarily over the hill.
FAUTE DE MIEUX (FOHT-de-MEEUH): “For want of something better”; for lack of a workable alternative, ideal, or guiding philosophy. Cf tant mieux, “so much the better,” and, for that matter, tant pis, “so much the worse,” expressions of cynical resignation in the face of yet another new—and questionable—development.
PLUS CA CHANGE (ploo-sa-SHAHN-zhe): “The more it changes,” the beginning of (and a recognized abbreviation for) the expression that is concluded by plus c’est la même chose, “the more it’s the same thing.” A worldly, even world-weary way of saying that there’s nothing new under the sun, and even if there were, it wouldn’t surprise you.
At the Black-Tie Dinner
ACTE GRATUIT (ahkt-grah-TWEE): The gratuitous act, sudden, enigmatic, and often disruptive, undertaken on impulse. So dubbed by the novelist André Gide at a time when the Surrealists (along with Gide’s characters) were turning out a lot of them. Shooting a gun into a crowd with no particular goal in mind would be an acte gratuit; so were many of the Sixties “happenings.”
FORCE MAJEURE (fors-mah-ZHUR): Literally, “superior strength.” The irresistible force, totally out of your control, generally unexpected, and, most important, serving to release you from your obligations. Includes what English-speaking insurance companies call “acts of God,” as well as various forms of strictly human negligence and bad judgment.
HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL (OHME-mwoy-EHN-sehn-soo-EL): The average sensual man, or, as the critic Matthew Arnold put it, introducing the phrase into English in the 1880s, the fellow “whose city is Paris, and whose ideal is the free, gay, pleasurable life of Paris.” In other words, anyone who lives the life of the senses and doesn’t let moral and intellectual considerations push him around. Today, though, a lot of people use it to mean not much more than “the typical man,” “the man of average desires,” “the man in the street.”
TRAHISON DES CLERCS (trah-ee-ZOHN-day-KLAYRK): The critic and essayist Julien Benda’s term (and his 1927 book title); literally, “treason of the clerks,” a reference to how intellectuals—writers, artists, and thinkers—had in that century betrayed themselves and each other by allowing their beliefs to be fired by political passions rather than guided by philosophical principles. To be directed at anybody who keeps losing sight of the big picture, the ultimate aim, in his desire to win this evening’s argument.
ESPRIT DE L’ESCALIER (es-PREE-de-less-kahl-YEH): Not the spirit, but the wit of the staircase; the slicing, but also rather wise, retort to somebody else’s fatuousness that you thought of only as you were on your way downstairs to the street (or upstairs to your room) after the party had ended.
And So to Bed
AMOUR-PROPRE (ah-MOOR-PROH-pr): An old phrase—literally, “self-love”—with an even wider range of meaning than the now-trendy narcissism, from simple self-esteem, to a need for admiration by others, to out-and-out conceit, to neurotic self-involvement. Don’t be pleased if someone tells you you’re a paragon (un parangón) of it.
ARRIÈRE-PENSÉE (ah-ree-AYR-pahn-SAY): Literally, “behind-thought.” A famous old trap: Does not mean afterthought or hindsight. Does mean an idea or intention that is concealed, an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda.
CRIME PASSIONNEL (kreem-pah-see-oh-NELL): Crime of passion, sure, but especially murder, and especia
lly when sexual jealousy is the motive. Two ss, two ns.
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR (dwah-de-sehn-YUHR): The right of the feudal lord, just as you’d expect, but specifically his right to sleep with the bride of any of his vassals on her wedding night.
NOSTALGIE DE LA BOUE (naws-tahl-ZHEE-de-la-BOO): “Yearning for the mud,” for degradation, depravity, and your basic wallow, particularly by a person we’d all have thought was above such things, and particularly in a guess-who’s-sleeping-with-whom context. Coined by a popular nineteenth-century French dramatist, it’s a phrase at this point more familiar to us English-speakers than to the French, some of whom will look at you admiringly when you use it, as if you’d made it up yourself.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
CHAPTER 1: 2 Library of Congress; 5 Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.; 7 Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Tarry-town, N.Y.; 10, 11, 13, 14 Library of Congress; 15 Morris Gerber Collection, “Old Albany People”; 16 Mark Twain Memorial, Hartford, Conn.; 18 Idaho Historical Society; 20 Houghton Library/Harvard University; 21 Photographed by Charles Sheeler/Reproduced by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation; 23 Alice Boughton/Library of Congress; 24 Hartford Insurance Group; 29 (top left) UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos; 29 (top right) The Sophia Smith Collection (Women’s Historical Archive)/Smith College, Northampton, Mass.; 29 (bottom left) Wide World Photos; 29 (bottom right) New York Public Library; 32 Pablo Picasso, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Gertrude Stein; 33 Wide World Photos; 34 David Moore/Black Star; 35. Wide World Photos; 36 Black Sparrow Press; 37 UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos; 38, 40 Wide World Photos; 49, 50, 52 Library of Congress.
