{"id":3859,"date":"2013-05-27T20:38:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T18:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpethzprd.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2024-02-20T13:40:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T11:40:34","slug":"a-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/2013\/05\/27\/a-la\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c0 la&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/2012\/08\/13\/oed-clusters\/\">A few months ago<\/a>, I wondered what could be the largest cluster of foreign words in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\">Oxford English Dictionary<\/a>, citing the examples of <i>femme something-or-other<\/i> and <i>sympathique<\/i> and company. It turns out that there is a much larger one! Here is the <i>\u00e0 la<\/i> cluster:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e0 la\t1579<br \/>\n\u00e0 la bonne heure\t1750<br \/>\n\u00e0 la broche\t\t1806<br \/>\n\u00e0 la brochette\t\t1821<br \/>\n\u00e0 la carte\t\t1816<br \/>\n\u00e0 la cr\u00e8me\t\t1741<br \/>\n\u00e0 la d\u00e9bandade\t\t1779<br \/>\n\u00e0 la fourchette\t\t1817<br \/>\n\u00e0 la Fran\u00e7aise\t\t1589<br \/>\n\u00e0 la modality\t\t1753<br \/>\n\u00e0 la mode\t\t1637<br \/>\n\u00e0-la-modeness\t\t1669<br \/>\n\u00e0 la mort\t\t1536<br \/>\n\u00e0 la page\t\t1930<br \/>\n\u00e0 la roi\t\t1852<br \/>\n\u00e0 la royale\t\t1853<br \/>\n\u00e0 la Russe\t\t1775<br \/>\n\u00e0 la Turquie\t\t1676<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s no less than 18 items (the date on the right is the first OED citation). It&#8217;s interesting that so many have to do with food, and even more that three or four are basically synonyms of &#8220;in fashion&#8221; (this is what <i>\u00e0 la page<\/i> basically means). I have to admit to being partial to <i>\u00e0-la-modeness<\/i> for its translanguage qualities, although I don&#8217;t know if I will be able to use it intelligently anytime soon (though one never knows; after all, I did manage to sneak <i>ptarmigan<\/i> in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.ethz.ch\/~kowalski\/gowers-prime-fields.pdf\">recent paper<\/a>&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, I wondered what could be the largest cluster of foreign words in the Oxford English Dictionary, citing the examples of femme something-or-other and sympathique and company. It turns out that there is a much larger one! Here is the \u00e0 la cluster: \u00e0 la 1579 \u00e0 la bonne heure 1750 \u00e0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/2013\/05\/27\/a-la\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u00c0 la&#8230;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,362,1185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france","category-language","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}