Fêted

Fête

1. A festival or feast.

2. a. An elaborate, often outdoor entertainment.

b. An elaborate party.

tr.v. fet·ed also fêt·ed, fet·ing also fêt·ing, fetes also fêtes

1. To celebrate or honor with a festival, a feast, or an elaborate entertainment.

2. To pay honor to.

 

My aunt pulled out a real, hardcopy of a dictionary to give us this definition. We were discussing the English language at Christmas dinner (it makes us sound like nerds, but my cousin was teaching English in Korea, and I am learning French in France, so language acquisition was a bit of a hot topic last night). Fêted came up as a homonym... its partner being "fetid (having a stale nauseating smell, as of decay)". They make a pretty impressive pair of homonyms. I probably don't need to point out that "fêted" is a loanword. You already knew that because of the "accent chapeau".

 

One of the positive things about having divorced parents is that I have been fêting Christmas for days, and I will not be finished until January 1st. It's been a busy few days, and fortunately we aren't exchanging gifts until the 28th, because I haven't wrapped anything yet. This week has been full of eating, family and church (I've attended four services this week!). Fortunately, I am not yet cloyed, nor do I expect to be by the end of my Christmas season.

 

I was happy to be playing harp in church today because the hospital and nursing  homes in town are closed to visitors because of influenza, so my tradition of playing of Christmas day had to be broken. I really enjoy Christmas music and I had a couple of new songs that I was working on this year that I wanted to share with other people. I was sitting in church and the wheels in my head started to spin about how much I love Christmas music, and how I would like to record an album of Christmas music (my friend did one this Christmas and I'm always listening to it in the car). Then another recurring idea joined forces with this Christmas album idea in my head: I've been thinking for a few years that it would be a good idea to have music programs in prisons. I just did a quick google and apparently this does exist in some places, but I'm sort of thinking that I could sell my album as a fundraiser to buy guitars or something for prisons. This is all in pipe dream stages, but already I'm pondering the practical considerations that would take this idea from a pipe dream to an album to some money to some form of realization of this idea.

The darkest evening of the year

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

BROUHAHA

Brouhaha is actually another word we use in English that is borrowed from the French (I googled this and apparently these are called ''loanwords'', I think they could have come up with a snappier word for this... considering how beautiful and special I find loanwords).

Brouhaha is a masucline noun that means:
bruit confus venant d'une foule.


It has (French) synonyms too, notably tintamarre and tohubohu, which I find also have the same onomatopoeic quality of the word brouhaha.


 My google search also turned up a website with a list of words used in English that are borrowed from French. I didn't click on it though, I thought it would be too much of a spoiler, taking the joy out of the slow discovery...

Cloying

Searching for a word to describe how I was feeling last night, the word blasé popped into my head... but as I do sometimes when I'm thinking and close to a computer, I looked up the word to see if it was really what I wanted.

''1. Uninterested because of frequent exposure or indulgence.

2. Unconcerned; nonchalant: had a blasé attitude about housecleaning.

3. Very sophisticated.''

It didn't really seem to fit my mood after all, and I never did find a word to describe what I was feeling, but I became interested in this information:

''French, from past participle of blaser, to cloy, from French dialectal, to be chronically hung over, probably from Middle Dutch blsen, to blow up, swell; see bhl- in Indo-European roots''

Then I realized that I didn't know what cloy meant. Turns out it means ''To cause distaste or disgust by supplying with too much of something originally pleasant, especially something rich or sweet; surfeit.'' So I sort of understand the connection between the French verb for to cloy and the idea of being hung over: alcohol in moderation is pleasant, but in excess it can be... distasteful? Unpleasant anyway.


I wanted to see the word ''cloy'' used in a sentence, and I actually found two Shakespeare quotations to help me out:

''O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?

O no, the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse'' 

and the second:

''Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies'' 

I find the use of the word more clear in the second quotation. In the first, I don't see why Shakespeare couldn't have used the word ''satiate'' or something else, because the idea of cloying doesn't seem necessary to the sentence, but then, en revanche, a feast is an excellent example of  something that is cloying. Thanks Shakespeare.


[''en revanche'' is a French phrase I particularly like the sound of. It means ''on the other hand''. But ''revanche'' is actually the French word for revenge.]


But to return to the word that set off all my musings, the word ''blasé'', I had to look up the definition of the French verb ''blaser'', because I have actually heard a French person describe themselves as feeling blasé, and I wanted to know if the feeling of French ''blasé'' is the same as the feeling of English people feeling ''blasé''.

''blaser, verbe transitif Sens  Rendre indifférent, émousser les sensations, les émotions suite à un abus de ces mêmes jouissances.'' So I'm going to translate that as: ''render indifferent; dull the feelings and emotions after an abuse of these very enjoyments''. In French the word ''jouissance'' can also be used to mean an orgasm. That's just a side note though, I'm pretty sure ''blaser'' has nothing to do with orgasms.

In conclusion, I think that both English and French people are basically talking about the same thing when they use the word ''blasé'', but that the French verb ''blaser'' does not seem to be the equivalent of cloying, because ''blaser'' is the creation of a dull and indifferent state, whereas ''to cloy'' in English goes beyond indifference to distaste or disgust. It's funny how the nonexistence of an English word in French or vice versa seems to indicate the nonexistence of an idea, which sometimes can seem like an interesting clue to the way we are different.