In a French Restaurant

Despite my wife being fluent in French, I have learned very little of that language in our married life. Of course, there are many French [phrases that have made their way into fairly common usage in English. For example, here are three you might use or hear in a restaurant.

"À la carte" means that each dish on the menu is priced individually, rather than being part of a set meal. It literally translates to "according to the card"—referring to the menu card. While the correct French spelling includes the accent (À la carte), it’s commonly written without it in English. (We are lazy about that stuff.) The term describes a dining style where meals are selected and paid for item by item, unlike a table d’hôte arrangement, which offers a fixed-price menu for a set combination of courses.

Though the exact date of its first use in French is unclear, à la carte entered the English language in the early 19th century.

For Americans, it means "with ice cream on top"

The phrase "à la mode" is French for "in the fashion" or "fashionable", and originally had nothing to do with dessert topped by ice cream. 

In classical French cuisine, it describes dishes prepared in a particular style, like boeuf à la mode, a pot roast cooked with wine and herbs.

The term was anglicised as a noun – alamode, which was a form of glossy black silk, and it appeared in a 1676 edition of The London Gazette:

But Americans are familiar with this phrase as meaning "with ice cream." That twist appears to have emerged in the late 19th century. One of the earliest documented uses of à la mode to mean served with ice cream was in an 1895 article from the Chicago Daily Tribune, describing a pie topped with ice cream. From there, the term caught on and became a staple of American diner lingo.

The American chicken cordon bleu

When someone says a dish is "cordon bleu", they’re not just talking about chicken stuffed with ham and cheese. They’re basically saying it’s top-tier, five-star, “kiss-the-chef” level stuff.

The phrase is French for “blue ribbon”, which back in the days of the Bourbon kings wasn’t just something you won at a school science fair—it was literally the highest rank of chivalry. By 1727, English speakers had picked it up to mean elite quality — especially when it came to chefs.

Fast forward to 1827, when a cookbook titled Le Cordon bleu ou nouvelle cuisinière bourgeoise hit Paris, dishing out top-notch recipes. Then in 1895, a newsletter called La Cuisinière Cordon-bleu began sharing pro tips from real chefs. And in 1896, Cordon Bleu cooking classes kicked off in Paris’s fancy Palais Royal, training folks to sauté like royalty.

In short: if someone says your cooking is cordon bleu, you can proudly toss your spatula in the air and take a bow.

canard

I heard a TV newscaster say that there is a group of Republicans who "have bought into Trump’s canard that the election was stolen from him." I have heard that word before and assumed it meant a hoax. My wife, a French speaker, said that the word canard in French means "duck." What's the connection?

She looked in one of her dictionaries and found a 16th-century French expression - vendre des canards à moitié. It literally means "to half-sell ducks" but this was possibly a proverb meaning "to fool" or "to cheat." The origin story isn't known but may have come from someone trying to cheat a customer in the sale of a duck at a market. Can you pass off half a duck as a whole duck and so half-sell it? We don't know. 

English speakers adopted this hoax or fabrication meaning of canard in the mid-1800s. 

There is also an aeronautical use of canard which has nothing to do with a hoax. In aeronautics, a canard is an arrangement wherein a small forewing or foreplane is placed forward of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft or a weapon. 

XB-70 Valkyrie experimental bomber

The term "canard" may be used to describe the aircraft itself, the wing configuration, or the foreplane. You find canard wings used in guided missiles and smart bombs.

This use of "canard" arose from the appearance of an aircraft called the Santos-Dumont 14-bis of 1906, which was thought to look like a duck with its neck stretched out in flight.

1906 Santos-Dumont 14-bis  CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Flea Markets

Montsoreau Flea Market, Loire Valley, France CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

My wife mentioned that with the weather warming up our local flea market would be reopening soon. This got my word-mind working on why you would want to name a shopping place after those pesky little parasites of the order Siphonaptera ("wingless bloodsucker") that infest dogs, clothing, and especially upholstery on old furniture that might be for sale. It seems like very poor marketing. My wife said she doubted that the etymology was that literal. 

A flea market is usually a street market that provides space for vendors to sell previously-owned (second-hand) merchandise. Being outdoors, they are often seasonal. The line sometimes blurs as these places move indoors or become year-round places. Sometimes "swap meet" or "casual market" is the label. I've seen flea markets mixed with farmer's markets where (hopefully) at least the produce is not second-hand! 

And what happens when a group of street vendors begins to gather in one place? Is that a flea market? Probably not, and especially not if they are selling new items as many street vendor do with t-shirts, art etc.

I still view a flea market as a place selling used goods, from collectibles (books, records, toys etc.), to antiques (from jewelry to furniture) and vintage clothing.

There is now a National Flea Market Association which almost seems antithetical to the whole casual concept.

Where did the "flea" part of the term come from? Certainly markets of a similar nature existed in the Middle East and Asia a very long time ago. But the fleas appellation? 

One American theory is that there was a "Fly Market" in the late 1700s in New York City, located at Maiden Lane near the East River in Manhattan. The location was originally a salt marsh and so flies, fleas and other annoying critters were part of it. That Fly Market was the city's principal market by the early 1800s. But no mention of fleas in the name.

Perhaps, the American term made its way over to Europe, but more likely is that the "flea" term came from France to America. This loan translation is known as a calque. For example, the French “cela va sans dire” is loaned to English as “it goes without saying.” [Sidebar: "It goes without saying" is an odd phrase since we almost always follow it by saying what doesn't need to be said: "It goes without saying that she has plenty of money."]

The accepted etymology for "flea market" is an English calque from the French "marché aux puces" ("market of the fleas"). The first reference to this term appeared in stories about a location in Paris in the 1860s which was actually called the "marché aux puces" because items sold there were previously used and worn and so could very easily have contained fleas.

A vintage travel gear seller at Marché Dauphine, Saint-Ouen, the home of Paris' flea market
by Jorge Royan,  CC BY-SA 3.0, Link