It is strange indeed, how other people seem to often have different experiences from ourselves. Why, I’ve heard tell that some grocery stores don’t even carry the exact same products as other grocery stores!
Oh gimme a break. You’re missing the second part of my advice, which is that if the word has other more, commonly understood synonyms, stay away from the foreign substitutions. So “table” and “door” don’t apply. They aren’t substitutions for another word or phrase. “Crudites”, on the other hand, doesn’t communicate anything that “veggies and dip” don’t.
Here’s another example. “Carafe”. I and plenty of other people know what a carafe is. But someone who is truly worldly and sophisticated would know that plenty of other people do not know what a “carafe” is. So if I’m around a general, English-speaking audience (like co-workers), I would not think to use that word when “container” or “glass” or “pitcher” fits better. Sticking to “carafe” at all costs would mark me as the dense one, because it suggests I’m too insular to code-switch properly and deploy alternative synonyms appropriately so that I’m communicating effectively.
This is my feeling exactly. If you buy some cheap $10 tray of carrots and celery and slap some french onion dip down with it, I’m sorry but it’s a vegetable tray. If you create some elaborate spread of vegetables, call it’s a crudites. Can we all agree on this? 
THE DEVIL YOU SAY
I hardly think using the word crudites once qualifies as “sticking to it at all costs” to the point of being dense and insular. Like I said before, it’s entirely likely that crudites was just the first word that came to mind for the woman.
“Crudites” is beginning to not look like a word anymore. Crudites crudites crudites.
That’s just it…for someone who is much, much more likely to say “crudité” (bonus: it’s the same word when I speak French! :p), there really isn’t a difference in ballpark between it and “omelette”. Admittedly my English is much more peppered with French than that of someone from, say, Florida, but for people who do consider this word to be an everyday word, it’s never going to cross their minds that it isn’t for someone else. In my experience, it would be like asking someone if they knew what a “table” is.
Your coworker might have been forcing it - some people do. But so many other people don’t that it’s possibly best to consider that people aren’t using a word to be pretentious, they are using a word because it’s the word they know!
Always a good thing! 
Although I’m coming to accept the fact that this the the meaning the word entrée has developed in English, the fact is this isn’t what the word actually means. In French, an entrée is an appetizer, and a plat principal is the main course. I’m not calling you out, but just taking this opportunity to gripe about it.
These threads always make me wonder; if I were to meet those of you who think using French (or foreign) words when speaking English is snobby, you’d probably all think I was a pretentious snob until you knew where I was from and that I speak both languages and that the two languages have mixed considerably in Québec and in some cases, I might not even be able to come up with the English word for something (I often joke that my mother tongue is Franglish). Do you judge everyone immediately for using these words, or do you wait until you know their background (e.g. ghetto-born) before determining that there’s no way those words are natural for them?
Yes, that I do know, but I was using it as a French derived word that has come to be an English word in its own right, as opposed to a French word being used as a French word (like saying “What, moi?”)
So if your glass thingy you make coffee in goes missing how do you make a sign asking where it is? Glass refers to something you drink out of, pitcher usually means something that holds cold stuff in the refrigerator, and container refers to what you keep the coffee grounds in.
How sheltered are your co-workers that they don’t know what a carafe is?
Well, I think technically “vegetable tray” isn’t really a synonym because it’s two words. And while you may substitute “container” for “carafe”* if someone doesn’t know the word, it’s also technically not a synonym as a carafe is a specific type of container. You certainly couldn’t use “glass of wine” instead of carafe at a restaurant. That’s flat out not the same, since you get a carafe so you can pour wine into your glass as you wish.
*eta: And I’m sorry, but if you ask for a container of wine, most people would look at you like you were raised on Mars.
I’d go with ‘pot’, myself.
If that was a reference to me, I have literally not shopped at any grocery store that did not carry Muenster if it carried cheese in the last, oh 15 years, probably longer, and said stores range from your common Safeway or Jewel to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. It’s as common as American cheese.
If you’ve had a different experience, fine, but I don’t think I deserve the snark over a product that is basically sold everywhere. Yes, I find it surprising. I’d also find it surprising if you asked me what American cheese was.
And call me crazy, but if I’m in a professional office setting, it wouldn’t occur to me that my co-workers are unfamiliar with “carafe” either. There are, after all, coffee carafes in the break room. 
It is, again, an extremely common word, and in general if someone has the intelligence to successfully function in a professional job, I’d also expect them to have a level of intelligence that includes a mid-level, common vocabulary. If there’s a word or two that we don’t have in common, I’ll politely ask, or you can politely ask, but it wouldn’t occur to me to see ulterior motives in that.
How about we just stick with this?
Seriously, the level of offense here reminds me of a long-ago incident where someone 15 years older than my 18-year-old self got mortally offended that I used “France” in conversation. Yes, I laughed, because it literally never occurred to me when she asked “What’s France?” that she was doing anything but making a joke – because, you know what? I grew up in a backwater, but I was still aware of France by the time I hit third grade, and I don’t think my experience is all that remarkable. Yes, I get that people have different experiences, but I don’t think I need to be excoriated for using what, to me, is common knowledge, when I’m not excoriating anyone else for civilly asking a question.
If you’re going to propose that your experiences are valid even when different (and, I’d say, fairly unusual), then so are mine.
God help me, but I’d use carafe, if that’s the word that came to mind. That just seems like another common word to me. I was at a Ruby Tuesday’s or something and they even said they’d leave the carafe of water at the table for us. Sure, if I thought or pitcher or pot of whatever I’d use that, but I wouldn’t think twice of using carafe just about anywhere.
There’s nothing more down homey than a Mr Coffee machine and they even have the word carafe right there: http://www.mrcoffeestore.com/products/replacement_parts
Oh, and crudites 9which I agree doesn’t even look like a word anymore) doesn’t mean a fancy platter. It just means chopped veggies and dip set out to nibble on.
It’s quite possible that the word has assimilated itself into regular English depending on where you grew up and your social circle. I’m familiar with the word crudites although, when pressed, I wasn’t sure of the exact definition. I knew it was some sort of appetizer. I can easily imagine certain dialects of English where it’s absolutely commonplace, so I can’t cast aspersions on the co-worker in the OP. For example, I suspect most people here know what an “au pair” is. I didn’t know what the heck that was until I was well into college and dated one, simply because where I grew up, nobody had such child raising accommodations. So, is “au pair” needlessly pretentious when a word like “live-in babysitter” will do?
I like to mentally pronounce “crudités” as “crud-ites” and that is really adding a lot to the entertainment value of this thread.
I was answering the point about entree not meaning main dish in the original French- that’s all.
Oh, come on, now we’re ganging up on her for not knowing about cheeses? Most of the people I know don’t know anything about cheese beyond American, Cheddar, Swiss, and Pepper Jack. If it’s not something you don’t pay attention to, you’re just not going to pick up on it.
I think it’s clear that this co-worker wields her culinary knowledge in an obnoxious way. Any further nitpicking of Monstro’s culinary knowledge is unwarranted.
I would too, but please stay on topic.
You mean the coffee pot? Because that’s what that doohickey is. No one, not even the most pretentious among us, call that a carafe in the lands that I’ve inhabited.
Since when is a container limited to coffee ground storage? Where I come from, it’s any item used to store a liquid or solid. See also milk container. A glass is any receptacle used for holding a liquid; there is not requirement that you drink from it. And please tell me how this pitcher is any different from this here carafe?
How sheltered are you that don’t know that most folks call that thing a coffee pot and will rightly be confused if you call it a carafe?
How are we four pages into this thread and people still haven’t realized that different people in different areas are familiar with different terms?
I call the thing in the coffeemaker a carafe. So do a lot of people I know. It doesn’t sound particularly pretentious to me. On the other hand, I had no frakkin’ idea that Muenster cheese was bright orange.
Sorry, I skimmed a little bit and used your post as a jumping-off point (although I obviously glossed over what you were trying to say.) Anyhow, the general point of my post applies to the OP: just because it’s a fancy foreign-derived word doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being used to make you feel like an idiot, to be pretentious, or as some kind of compensatory device by the co-worker. It may very well just be the word she’s most familiar with.
ETA: Wait, we can’t use “carafe” now, for fear of being labeled pretentious? 
(Although, to me a carafe is more often used to refer to a glass container like this, as in “a carafe of orange juice.”)
Personally, I’m not ganging up on anyone. I’m pointing out that my common knowledge is different from her common knowledge, and having different experiences from other people, which include knowing what Muenster looks like, what crudités are, and what a carafe is, does not make me an elitist snob. I’m pointing out that her reaction to the word “crudités” was an *over-*reaction. The most likely explanation is that her co-worker used the word because that’s the word she uses, not because she’s making a (very lame) attempt to lord it over someone else.
Why on earth is it necessary to get bent out of shape because she had to ask a question? Adults don’t stop learning just because they hit the age of 25. Adults don’t treat on-going learning as something remarkable or worthy of embarrassment or offense, either.