"Sche childide her firste born sone, and wlappide him in clothis,
and puttide in a _cracche_."
(WYCLIF, _Luke_, ii. 7.)
_Pew_ is from Old Fr. _puy_, a stage, eminence, Lat. _podium_, which
survives in _Puy de Dome_, the mountain in Auvergne on which Pascal made
his experiments with the barometer. _Dupuy_ is a common family name in
France, but the _Depews_ of the West Indies have kept the older
pronunciation.
Many Old French words which live on in England are obsolete in France.
_Chime_ is Old Fr. _chimbe_ from Greco-Lat. _cymbalum_. Minsheu (1617)
derived _dismal_ from Lat. _dies mali_, evil days. This, says Trench,
"is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a
while to reject with contempt." But Minsheu is substantially right, if
we substitute Old Fr. _dis mal_, which is found as early as 1256. Old
Fr. _di_, a day, also survives in the names of the days of the week,
_lundi_, etc. In _remainder_ and _remnant_ we have the infinitive and
present participle of an obsolete Old French verb derived from Lat.
_reman[=e]re_. _Manor_ and _power_ are also Old French infinitives, the
first now only used as a noun (_manoir_), the second represented by
_pouvoir_. _Misnomer_ is the Anglo-French infinitive, "to misname."
[Page Heading: INFLECTED FRENCH FORMS]
In some cases we have preserved meanings now obsolete in French.
_Trump_, in cards, is Fr. _triomphe_, "the card game called ruffe, or
_trump_; also, the ruffe, or _trump_ at it" (Cotgrave), but the modern
French word for trump is _atout_, to all. _Rappee_ is for obsolete Fr.
(tabac) _rape_, pulverised, rasped. Fr. _talon_, heel, from Vulgar Lat.
_*talo_, _talon-_, for _talus_, was applied by falconers to the heel
claw of the hawk. This meaning, obsolete in French, has persisted in
English. The _mizen_ mast is the rearmost of three, but the Fr. _mat de
misaine_ is the fore-mast, and both come from Ital. _mezzana_ middle,
"also the poop or _mizensail_[10] in a ship" (Torriano).
As in the case of Latin, we have some inflected French forms in English.
_Lampoon_ is from the archaic Fr. _lampon_, "a drunken song" (Miege,
_French Dict._, 1688). This is coined from the imperative _lampons_, let
us drink, regularly used as a refrain in seditious and satirical songs.
For the formation we may compare American _vamose_, to skedaddle, from
Span. _vamos_, let us go. The military _revelly_ is the French
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