In praise of … le mot juste

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/20/in-praise-mot-juste

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Outré French pedants sometimes demand that foreign imports, such as le weekend, should be banned from their language. It ought, they ordain, in their de haut en bas way, to be de rigueur to employ French usages only. But that kind of dirigiste practice would demean any language. No nation has a vocabulary to suit every eventuality, as George W Bush observed when he complained that the French had no word for entrepreneur.

Take, for instance, the word degringolade, deployed by Timothy Garton Ash in his column last week. Say it aloud, with a dying fall, savouring every syllable. You might turn to such terms as downfall, deterioration, slow, sad slide towards nothingness – but none of them does it justice, and certainly none can match its melancholy music. The rule in these cases should be: seek le mot juste, whatever its origins – even if it has had to be borrowed from Azerbaijan.

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