Why is it called? Part 4: Clothing Etymology

Why is it called...? Part 4: Clothing Etymology Have you ever asked yourself why something is called by a particular name? Why are bérets called that? How do clothes get named? There is often a story. Here is a short list of some clothing articles and how they got their names, etymology. We invite readers to add their own favorites or ask about other clothes for which they would like to know the origin in the comments. We'll try to find the answer. Charentaises A charentaise is a general French word for slipper. It refers however to a specific pantoufle usually plaid which came from the area near Angoulême in the Charente region of France about 300 years ago. Hence the Etymology comes from the place. The area had many paper mills. At the time paper was made from rags and leftover felt pieces from the paper making were used to line wooden shoes, making them warmer and softer. A bit later a shoemaker from the town of La Rochefoucaud in the Charente had the idea to add a r…
Voir Plus about Why is it called? Part 4: Clothing Etymology
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 12 octobre 2022
  • 0

Paris Quotes (France, La Seine …)

Paris Quotes (France, La Seine too) To be Parisian is not to have been born in Paris, but to be reborn there. — Sacha Guitry ... here's what Paris is: it is a giant reference work, a city which you can consult like an encyclopaedia: whatever page you open gives you a complete list of information that is richer than that offered by any other city. Take the shops... in Paris there are cheese shops where hundreds of cheeses, all of them different, are displayed, each labelled with its own name, cheeses covered in ash, cheeses covered in walnuts: a kind of museum or Louvre of cheese... Above all this is a triumph of the spirit of classification and nomenclature. So if tomorrow I start writing about cheese, I can go out and consult Paris like an enormous cheese encyclopaedia. -- Italo Calvino in Hermit in Paris Two days and three endless nights later we arrived in Paris... Paris looked much bigger than Bordeaux, but much uglier. The bread tasted flat. Everything, even the sun…
Voir Plus about Paris Quotes (France, La Seine …)
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 7 octobre 2022
  • 0

Josephine Baker is back at the Bobino

The Gaîté metro station, on metro line 13, was rebaptized a year ago in the name of the French-American artist and resistant Josephine Baker. The choice of which station to name in her honor was obvious for her son Brian Bouillon-Baker, who was at the initiative of the request made to the Ministry of Transport and RATP. The station is located a few steps from the Bobino Theater, which is where the singer and dancer performed for the last time, on April 9, 1975, two days before her death. Place Joséphine Baker is just around the corner too. This Fall Brian Bouillon-Baker brings his mother back to the Bobino in a show which is part recreation of his mother's hits and part biography. It's a full circle! Tickets are now available for this fall's 6 dates. Reservations To whet your whistle enjoy this teaser: In case you've been stuck in a cave for the last year, Josephine Baker's cenotaph was installed in the Pantheon of illustrious French people in November 2021. …
Voir Plus about Josephine Baker is back at the Bobino
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 2 octobre 2022
  • 0

Learn French! Bear! Espèces d’ours!

Bear! Espèces d'ours! After being charged by an adult male grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park and shouting "Bear!" John and Lisa (read the Yellowstone press release here and listen to John tell the story here) were amused to return to Paris to find an exhibition entitled The World of Bears or  Espèces d'ours! at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. So they trotted right over to see what the museum had to say about bears. It turns out there are 8 species of bears in the world. The grizzly bear John and Lisa encountered, called Ursus arctos horribilis in scientific nomenclature, is a subspecies of the brown bear. It is also less commonly known as the silvertip bear. Scientists generally do not use the name grizzly bear but call it the North American brown bear to distinguish it from the European or Asian brown bear. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark called it "grisley". They were notoriously bad spellers and perhaps meant grizzly in reference to lighter tips …
Voir Plus about Learn French! Bear! Espèces d’ours!
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 22 septembre 2022
  • 1

Hints and Hindsights: La Rentrée

Hints and Hindsights: La Rentrée by Shari Leslie Segall In France, September is the Monday morning of the year. You’ve just had a 60-day weekend and it’s time to get up, grope your way to the figurative and literal shower and go to work. Even if you didn’t take all of July and August off, it’s likely that almost everyone you had to deal with during that legendarily sacred span of time was away for at least part of it, in effect giving you a double vacation: yours and the forced unproductiveness produced in your universe by theirs. Now comes la rentrée (a word for whose English translation the French desperately scramble: it literally means “reentry,” can mean “back-to-school,” but is a general reference to returning to reality after those month-long strolls on the sand, hikes in the Himalayas and reunions with relatives). And the strategy for facing it is like that of ripping off a band-aid as quickly as possible to minimize the skin-scraping pain: “Just let me get throug…
Voir Plus about Hints and Hindsights: La Rentrée
  • Avatar of Guest
  • 12 septembre 2022
  • 0

Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Daughter of Pablo, The exhibition

I recently revisited the Musée Picasso in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris and highly recommend the current temporary exhibition, entitled Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Fille de Pablo (on until 12/31/2022), held to celebrate the addition of nine new masterpieces to the national collection. Maya (a nickname, her actual name was María de la Concepción) was Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter’s daughter, born in 1935. She wasn’t Picasso’s first child — he had a son, Paulo, from a previous relationship, with Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova. He also had two other children after Maya, with painter Françoise Gilot. The exhibition focuses on Picasso’s relationship with Maya and its influence on his work. Despite the occasionally confusing museum signage, Picasso’s relationship with his daughter is a great guiding thread through a big body of work that can be daunting at times. The museum is quite big and there is much to see, so you can easily spend three or four hours wandering the halls. Going…
Voir Plus about Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Daughter of Pablo, The exhibition
  • Avatar of Guest
  • 7 septembre 2022
  • 0

Thrillers set in Paris

Paris! What a better place for mystery. Such an intriguing setting. A body found in the Seine, Cold War spies, World War II subversions and escapes, art and history crimes. There are many crime and thriller novels set in our fair city full of phantoms. Think ahead for great Paris-themed Christmas gifts. Offer your friends or family thrillers set in Paris! What a better place for a mysterious setting. Or a memoir about how funny life can be here for the expat. https://fusac.fr/anglo-authors-in-paris/ Or browse our Paris/France selection for just the right book about historic restaurants, Paris walks, Paris movies, Paris design and fashion. We have a wide variety on a special shelf. Here's a few of the thrillers set in Paris to whet your whistle. Cara Black is a bestselling American mystery writer. She is best known for her Aimée Leduc mystery novels featuring a female Paris-based private investigator. Her first novel Murder in the Marais was nominated for an Anthon…
Voir Plus about Thrillers set in Paris
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 2 septembre 2022
  • 0

Two obelisks and a giraffe

Two obelisks from the entrance to Luxor Temple were offered to France by the Viceroy of Egypt in 1830. One thrones on the place de la Condorde still today. But did you know there was another precious gift from the Viceroy just a few years earlier? Rosa Bonheur moved to Paris from Bordeaux, she was 7 years old at the time and did not like Paris at all until she discovered Paris' latest phenomenon... Zarafa. In 1826 Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt, gave Zarafa (Arabic for «Giraffe», literally «charming» or «lovely one»), the first living giraffe to set foot on French soil, to Charles X as a diplomatic gift. She was separated from her mother at 3 months of age, traveled 2000 miles down the Nile, then across the Mediterranean by boat, arriving in Marseilles, where she would spend her first winter acclimatizing. The following spring, she left for Paris on a 41 day walk (880km) accompanied by 55 year old French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Each stag…
Voir Plus about Two obelisks and a giraffe
  • Avatar of Lisa
  • 18 août 2022
  • 0