“A tour de force of savoir-faire and panache that should find its raison-d’être on the bookshelf of anyone who appreciates the English language, and its most influential intruder, French”.

—Jon Henley, The Guardian

“Chapeau for this delightful compendium of the French that all of us want to know and speak”.

-–Walter Wells, The International Herald Tribune

The English language is incorporating French words at an ever-increasing pace. In Say Chic, the authors have gathered 70 of the most commonly used (and misused) to bring us the remarkable adventures of these words’ sometimes centuries-long integration and transformation. What we don’t often realize is that the French language then took a lot of its prodigal words back, changing their meaning to match the English. These definitions will surprise even the best linguists as they learn that the name for “limo” or limousine, comes from the region “Limousin” in France where shepherds wore a heavy hooded cloak called a limousine to protect themselves from the elements. The first covered automobiles which included a roof to cover the driver were then called “limousines”, to distinguish them from more common open-air cars. Or take “vignette”, originally meaning a small vine in architectural detail. In the mid-eighteenth century the word crossed the channel, this time to designate an unbordered drawing or illustration fading away in shading at the edges. It evolved to mean a short literary sketch or account. Quite a departure from the small vine it draws its roots from. With delightful illustrations reminiscient of the works of Sempé, these words, and many more, enchant and surprise, as the authors uncover their unlikely transformations through time and place.