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THE LOUNGE
The Lounge is the free-talk section of the Forum. You can post anything here about any topic outside English grammar and usage. Wide-ranging discussions and debates will be allowed in the Lounge subject only to the condition that the subjects are not unlawful, obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, and threatening. As in the Forum’s sections on English grammar and usage, we expect discussants to keep the Lounge a vibrant venue for relevant, healthy, and civilized discussions, not impertinent, angry, or violent ones.
So if you have any non-grammar thought or idea you’d like to share, make the Lounge the sounding board for it now! Let your fellow Forum members help you germinate the seed of that idea if it’s a good one—or terminate it if it turns out to be otherwise.
Brand-new word for “French kiss” finally enters French lexicon
In “From French kissing to French knickers: Why do we call anything a bit dirty ‘French’?,” a feature article that came out in the May 31, 2013 issue of the Telegraph.co.uk, Dr. Brooke Magnanti (formerly known as Belle de Jour3) reports that the French language has admitted into its lexicon a verb for “French kissing.” But she’s none too happy with the choice of word: “Sadly, they have not preserved the ‘French’ in the kiss, choosing instead galocher—to kiss with tongues—which sounds a bit too close to ‘galoshes’ for my liking, which are something a bit like Wellington boots, only they go over your shoes instead of in place of them, and is very definitely Not Sexy.”
FROM THE TELEGRAPH.UK
Even so, Dr. Magnanti says that the admission of galocher into the French lexicon is cause for some celebration: “Now from the Champs-Elysees to Calais, our Gallic cousins can finally adequately describe a rite of passage that has enchanted teenagers since the dawn of time, and/or the dawn of teen literature.” And she’s glad to know that French kissing is still a style of kissing that is and will always be reserved exclusively for those we lust: “If old Gaul was divided into three parts, so too is the perfect French kiss: the tender parting of the lips, the first tentative meeting of tongue, and the unhinging of the jaw to remove food from the back teeth.”
Read Dr. Brooke Magnanti’s “From French kissing to French knickers” in Telegraph.co.uk now!
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