Is there anything quite so unnecessary in these straitened financial times than using the word chez when speaking English?
I think it's perfectly acceptable to spatter one's daily chit-chat with some foreign words, like coberta-acolchoada and treppenhausen for example, but chez, I think, is just slightly beyond the pale.
Chez is a derivative of the French word chez and means "at the place of".
Jessica Brinton in his, frankly incomprehensible (but unputdownable), Sunday Times column (it seems to be written in English but not as we know it) writes:
"Then there was a debauched evening in Richmond chez Nicky Haslam, of which the less said the better."
I couldn't agree more, mate.
4 comments:
"Straitened times" - no?
Typogrifical mistooks aside, there's a wumman's clothes shop (a boutique I'd imagine it calls itself)in my home town snappily titled "Chez Therese".
Except that it's only a snappy title if you pronounce "Chez" as if it's short for "Chesney" and don't bother to pronounce the first 'e' in "Therese" - so it becomes simply "Chez Trez".
Pronouncing it "properly" - as in "shay ter-EZZ" wouldn't be snappy at all. And would be considered a bit up your own erse.
Neither pronunciation is particularly accurate anyway. Yer wumman who owns the shop is called Teresa.
You're right. It was a small mistake but a significant one anyway and thanks for pointing it out.
Used to be a shop in my hometown called Yasmeen Fashions although, curiously, nobody else seems to recall it. So it probably didn't used to be there at all.
There was a top wee grotty clothes shop in Glesga on the way up Gallowgate towards The Barrowlands that delighted in the name Trendy Fashions.
Forgot to mention that, inspired by Chez Trez, I intend to call my steak house Chateaubrian(d).
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