Glossary of French words and expressions in English  

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Before you add a new word or phrase, please CHECK whether it is ALREADY listed in another subsection of this article. Also read the following! Has the word concerned become part of ordinary everyday English? --> Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern English. English words of French origin, such as art, competition, force, machine, and table are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French, and are commonly used by English speakers without any consciousness of their French origin.

This article, on the other hand, covers French words and phrases that have entered the English lexicon without ever losing their character as Gallicisms: they remain unmistakably "French" to an English speaker. They are most common in written English, where they retain French diacritics and are usually printed in italics. In spoken English, at least some attempt is generally made to pronounce them as they would sound in French; an entirely English pronunciation is regarded as a solecism.

Some of them were never "good French", in the sense of being grammatical, idiomatic French usage. Some others were once normal French but have become very old-fashioned, or have acquired different meanings and connotations in the original language, to the extent that they would not be understood (either at all, or in the intended sense) by a native French speaker.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Glossary of French words and expressions in English" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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