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4 Responses to “There’s no word…”

1. Anonymous says:

   July 11, 2007 at 16:29

   …apart from froncement, superficiel, hereux hasard, vicariant, matamore…

   On the other hand, there’s no word in English for “jobard”
2. Anonymous says:

   July 11, 2007 at 17:01

   Well, those word are vaguely similar, but they don’t mean the same thing as the english words.

   - In the expression “Turn this frown upside down”, the frown is a facial expression involving mostly muscles around the mouth and denoting sadness. In French, the expression “froncement de sourcil” (“froncement” when used alone more commonly refers to a gathering of fabric than a facial expression) denotes a facial expression involving the brow and indicating surprise or anger.

   - “This is a shallow pool” would not be translated
   as “Ceci est un etang superficiel”. “Superficiel” only
   applies to the abstract sense of shallow (i.e. when
   it refers to someone’s character). In the sense
   of “depth”, the expression is “peu profond”, that is
   “Ceci est un etang peu profond”

   - “heureux hasard” is not a word

   - “vicariant” is “acting in the capacity of a vicar”. The english meaning is “experienced secondhand”.

   - “matamore” is “faux brave, vantard plus courageux en paroles qu’en actes” (“falsely brave, boaster more courageous in words than actions”). Bully is someone using violence or threat of violence to intimidate. Interestingly, the French Wikipedia page on “Bully” gives the english etymology (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully)
3. kaput says:

   September 25, 2007 at 17:48

   Speaking of words and “meaning halos”, perhaps you could be interested in that game (while waiting for an English version) : http://www.lirmm.fr/jeuxdemots
4. Nicolas says:

   October 25, 2007 at 14:30

   “Heureux hasard”, ce sont deux morphèmes, mais c’est un mot. Sorry for those who don’t make the difference.

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Arno Gourdol is a senior director of engineering for Adobe's Web Platform and Authoring team, contributing to the WebKit project, web standards and for all the related authoring tools and services, including Dreamweaver, PhoneGap, Edge, Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Builder and BrowserLabs. He has previously worked on the Flash runtime, bringing it to desktop apps and to iOS, Android and Blackberry with Adobe AIR. Before that, he led several initiatives within Adobe's Creative Suite Business Unit, including XMP, Version Cue and Bridge. Prior to joining Adobe in 2001 he was part of the User Interface team at Apple that conceived, designed and implemented Aqua, the user interface of Mac OS X. Arno is a graduate of the Grenoble University. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys traveling from Abel Tasman to Zanzibar.
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