# "Au Jus" as a noun **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 17, 2006, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945 "2006-02-17T14:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/41 "2006-02-17T18:21:26Z")
As an addendum: You can’t claim that “au jus” as a noun is wrong even though people use the phrase that way, and then say “Rio Grande” is correct because people use it that way. If “Rio Grande” is correct due to usage, so is “au jus.” ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/42 "2006-02-17T18:34:10Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > With “au jus” people aren’t intending to pick up on a new usage–they are mistakenly thinking (unthinkingly) that they are using it in the way it’s been intended to be used by competent speakers all along. Sez who? How could you possibly know what these people are thinking and what they intend? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/43 "2006-02-17T18:34:52Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > As an addendum: You can’t claim that “au jus” as a noun is wrong even though people use the phrase that way, and then say “Rio Grande” is correct because people use it that way. If “Rio Grande” is correct due to usage, so is “au jus.” Actually, i don’t think you are talking about two equivalent cases here. If i use the term Rio Grande as an English speaker, i’m using a term that is in the Spanish language, and i’m using it in a way that mirrors its Spanish usage. But if i use the term “au jus” as a noun, i am not only using a French word as an English speaker, but am making a fundamental alteration to usage itself. It is clear that “au jus” as a noun has fallen into common usage. But i still don’t think your comparison with Rio Grande is especially accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/44 "2006-02-17T18:54:27Z")
> [@Gary T](#): > > Sez who? How could you possibly know what these people are thinking and what they intend? In another message on this thread, I indicated this is something “I presume.” Presumptions like this are generally pretty safe, though. If you wonder “Why did he do that,” you can often answer this question by asking yourself “Why would I do that under those circumstances?” You can get insight into the person’s mental states by looking into your own. We do this all the time, generally with (a certain adequate level of) success. Its basic to our ability to comprehend others as motivated and reason-driven beings. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/45 "2006-02-17T19:17:09Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Grammarians and educated people are part of culture too. They should have a say in the use of language just as much as anyone. If they think something is incorrect, that means a certain percentage of people do not use it as part of their English language! Absolutely: prescriptivists get the same say in the langauge as anyone else. That is, they get to: 1. Choose the words that they (and nobody else) uses; and 2. Choose whether to deliberately misunderstand or get worked up over someone else’s usage whether or not they understand that usage. Prescriptivists differ from most language users in that they choose to get worked up over some language usages that other folks don’t. They don’t differ in their ability to control other folks’ language usage or in their understanding of other folks’ language usage. > [@Mindfield](#): > > That’s a bit broad a definition though. By the same token I could say “I like sandwich. It is best with the mustard.” You could, and I would understand you, but it would make my brow wrinkle first. (Note that coming up with a sentence like this is probably pretty difficult for you: that’s a good indication that it’s a truly ungrammatical sentence). I need to put an addendum, then, on a competent speaker: a competent speaker conveys an idea such taht the audience understands it **transparently**. In this case, your nonstandard use of articles makes your meaning opaque, makes the listener devote unnecessary attention to decoding your meaning. That’s what makes it incompetent speech. Remember, however, my thought experiment with ordering au jus? I propose that if you order your beef “with extra juice,” you’ll make the audience spend more time decoding your meanign than if you order your beef “with extra au jus.” As such, the former phrase is the one chosen by the less competent speaker. > [@Frylock](#): > > Sure, but a competent speaker is not the same thing as someone who is using the language correctly. I’m confused, then. Are you backing away from your earlier claim that > [@](#): > > With “au jus” people aren’t intending to pick up on a new usage–they are mistakenly thinking (unthinkingly) that they are using it in the way it’s been intended to be used by competent speakers all along. Or is the phrase “all along” integral to that earlier claim–that is, do you agree that people who say “au jus” are correctly thinking that they are using the phrase in the way that it’s been intended to be used by competent speakers in modern parlance? Either way, I could use some clarification of your position here. Also, I think that this thread can only have a factual answer if the question relates to dictionary definitions; in that case, it’s already been answered (and you’re right). The more interesting questions are evidently a matter for Great Debates :). Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/46 "2006-02-17T19:21:13Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Prescriptivists differ from most language users in that they choose to get worked up over some language usages that other folks don’t. They don’t differ in their ability to control other folks’ language usage or in their understanding of other folks’ language usage. Most, perhaps, but I know plenty of people that get worked up, or at least make fun of, others’ “stuffy” grammar and language. Implying, of course, that laidbackness is the “proper” way to speak. ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/47 "2006-02-17T19:28:04Z")
> [@missbunny](#): > > In 1983-85, when I was a server at a place with Roast Beef au Jus on the menu, and if people wanted more of that stuff that came on the side in a little cup they asked for “more au jus.” Everyone knew what they meant. I think I would have been confused if they just asked for “more juice.” > > Ick, just thinking about asking for “more juice for my meat, please” grosses me out a little. Sounds like they want a cup of bloody drippings. “Au jus” sounds a lot nicer. Anyhoo, it was clear what they meant when asking for au jus; not clear when they asked just for “juice.” > > Now when they asked for more “OH juice,” that was the most confusing of all. The thing about “au jus” is that I really take it as a euphemism. You could put juice on the menu and everyone would know what it meant, but it would be blunt and visceral. Au jus obscures that the same way “eau de toilette” obscures the word “toilet” that has bad connotations for English speakers since it’s already in use for something gross. If you take away the “au” in “ au jus” then it really ruins the effect since jus and juice aren’t different enough for it to obscure that it’s “with fluid that oozed out.” So the au has a function. Asking for extra jus defeats the entire purpose of calling it “au jus” instead of “with juice.” I had my first “au jus” experience recently where the “au jus” turned out to be “with terrible gravy” and I made a mental note if I ever ordered it from them again it would have to be “sans jus, since that stuff is NOT jus.” But I would probably say “without the ‘au jus’,” rather than, “without au jus,” or “without jus.” I really think that if I used the term “au jus” in any sentence, there would be invisible quotes around it and if I had to say anything about the ‘au jus’ I would use “the” in front of it to distinguish that I’m referring to part of the dish’s description, I’m not speaking in French. ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/48 "2006-02-17T19:30:19Z")
In other words, nobody knows it, but I am really saying, “can I have extra ‘au jus’?” ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/49 "2006-02-17T19:31:01Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Most, perhaps, but I know plenty of people that get worked up, or at least make fun of, others’ “stuffy” grammar and language. Implying, of course, that laidbackness is the “proper” way to speak. That’s a very fair point. I’d be okay with calling those folks prescriptivists, too (although a competent speaker would clarify this usage 😉 ). For the record, I used to get that sort of dumbass mockery all the time when I was a kid, and for awhile I made an effort to simplify my own vocabulary in order to avoid it; it got to the point where sometimes I’d be rendered silent by my inability to think of a monosyllabic synonym of a word that I wanted to use. So I don’t approve of that angle, either. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/50 "2006-02-17T19:33:26Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > You could, and I would understand you, but it would make my brow wrinkle first. (Note that coming up with a sentence like this is probably pretty difficult for you: that’s a good indication that it’s a truly ungrammatical sentence). I need to put an addendum, then, on a competent speaker: a competent speaker conveys an idea such taht the audience understands it **transparently**. In this case, your nonstandard use of articles makes your meaning opaque, makes the listener devote unnecessary attention to decoding your meaning. That’s what makes it incompetent speech. Thing is, first time i heard someone say “with au jus,” i did exactly that: furrowed my brow and devoted “unnecessary attention” to decoding the meaning. I’m no hard-line prescriptivist, but i also don’t have much time for the attitude that anything goes as long as we can get used to it. Personally, i think that Brian Garner, in his _Dictionary of Modern American Usage_, draws a good balance between descriptive and prescriptive grammar and usage, shunning both unnecessary prescriptivism and anti-intellectual descriptivism. ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/51 "2006-02-17T19:59:36Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > You could, and I would understand you, but it would make my brow wrinkle first. (Note that coming up with a sentence like this is probably pretty difficult for you: that’s a good indication that it’s a truly ungrammatical sentence). I need to put an addendum, then, on a competent speaker: a competent speaker conveys an idea such taht the audience understands it **transparently**. In this case, your nonstandard use of articles makes your meaning opaque, makes the listener devote unnecessary attention to decoding your meaning. That’s what makes it incompetent speech. True – and that’s probably not the best example I could come up with (if I need to deliberately construct a bad sentence I tend to imagine how a foriegner would conjugate it; for some reason it ends up sounding slavic). There are ways in English however to construct a sentence proplerly that would not necessarily be understood transparently. The common (if old) phrase, “Stone walls do not a prison make” is archaic, but is still a perfectly acceptable construct, even if it’s one we wouldn’t use these days. It was strange to me in my formative years – it was a margin quip in a Mad Magazine of the day – “Stone walls do not a prison make, but they sure help!” – and I couldn’t understand why the sentence was formed that way. I thought it was part of the joke so I didn’t get it. > [@](#): > > Remember, however, my thought experiment with ordering au jus? I propose that if you order your beef “with extra juice,” you’ll make the audience spend more time decoding your meanign than if you order your beef “with extra au jus.” As such, the former phrase is the one chosen by the less competent speaker. The only reason this is acceptable though is because _au jus_ doesn’t have a proper name by which it can be referenced. We thus simply ask for “more _au jus_” because, human speech following the path of least resistance as it does, turning it into a noun is easier than saying “more beef-flavoured liquid for dipping my sandwich in.” ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/52 "2006-02-17T20:06:42Z")
> [@Mindfield](#): > > The only reason this is acceptable though is because _au jus_ doesn’t have a proper name by which it can be referenced. We thus simply ask for “more _au jus_” because, human speech following the path of least resistance as it does, turning it into a noun is easier than saying “more beef-flavoured liquid for dipping my sandwich in.” I agree with all of this–I just don’t agree that anything you’ve described is a problem. People realized that there wasnt a good noun for this stuff, but there was an adjective used to describe it that could easily turn into a noun, and so they did so. Most folks understand what they mean; the noun easily fills the hole in the language. The noun is efficient, as you point out. Isn’t this a linguistic innovation that we should celebrate rather than disparage? Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/53 "2006-02-17T20:10:31Z")
If I wanted to order more juice in Spanish, would I say “mas au jus” or “au mas jus”? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Squee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@Squee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squee)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/54 "2006-02-17T20:13:33Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > If I wanted to order more juice in Spanish, would I say “mas au jus” or “au mas jus”? > > 😉 Rio Grade au jus … =P ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/55 "2006-02-17T20:17:09Z")
Incidentally, I just submitted this to the [Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary Project](http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/newword_display_recent.php); hopefully they’ll correct their dictionary with this usage soon :). I also found [an interesting discussion of the term](http://www.takeourword.com/TOW146/page4.html) > [@](#): > > In the Sez You page of issue 145, Ken Williams comments on the waitress who asked if he wanted his roast beef sandwich “with au jus”, to which you responded with “Aaargh!” While the waitress clearly was not fluent in French, her English was impeccable. English syntax requires a preposition in that construction. “Au jus” lacks an English preposition, so she provided the one. The fact that there is a French preposition in the phrase is irrelevant, since the construction as a whole has been adopted into English and reanalyzed to fit English syntax. This is a normal process which has occurred innumerable times in the past. It only seems incongruous because it is recent and because some of us have enough knowledge of French to recognize the original syntactical structure. (there’s mroe there, but this was the bit that I think is most interesting. They also compare it to “a la mode,” but as has already been pointed out here, we’ve already got a perfectly cromulent English word for ice cream). Daniel ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/56 "2006-02-17T20:25:54Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > And you have yet to give a reason why it is. It’s not common usage, fine, _but there is nothing wrong with it **gramatically**._ > > Now, if you want to assert it is, tell me what rule of grammar it breaks. Tautology. This sentence violates breaks accepted norms considered acceptable of tautologous tautologies and redundant redundancies in grammatical grammar language and doubles terms used twice in this sentence. If you’d rather couch that as poor usage or poor style rather than poor grammar, fine. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/57 "2006-02-17T20:33:31Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > Tautology. This sentence violates breaks accepted norms considered acceptable of tautologous tautologies and redundant redundancies in grammatical grammar language and doubles terms used twice in this sentence. If you’d rather couch that as poor usage or poor style rather than poor grammar, fine. If you’re comparing the two, you’re factually wrong. When you say “this sentence violates breaks,” you’ve used two verbs in a row in an ungrammatical fashion that no native English speaker would do without intentionally trying to break the language’s grammar. A person who uses “au jus” as a noun is doing nothing of the sort. Yes, “au” in a preposition in French, but it’s not in English, so there’s no repetition. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/58 "2006-02-17T20:34:57Z")
Lots of this discussion has been about what is “correct” (that is, of course, appropriate because that’s the question asked by the OP). There is universal agreement that a French phrase has been adopted by English speakers and then its usage corrupted to have a slightly different role grammatically than the original French phrase. Even the descriptivists who say that any sufficiently common usage is indistinguishable from correct grammar must admit that this usage arose out of corruption in the crossover. Any of us familiar with and respectful of the original usage find this corruption annoying and ignorant, however snooty we may be for finding it thus. Is there a term like [Engrish](http://www.engrish.com) that applies to Americans incorrectly using French? ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/59 "2006-02-17T20:42:21Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > I agree with all of this–I just don’t agree that anything you’ve described is a problem. People realized that there wasnt a good noun for this stuff, but there was an adjective used to describe it that could easily turn into a noun, and so they did so. Most folks understand what they mean; the noun easily fills the hole in the language. The noun is efficient, as you point out. Isn’t this a linguistic innovation that we should celebrate rather than disparage? I guess that depends on which camp you sit in. I’m probably a little more prescriptivist in my application of language, though not to any extreme. Still, to the degree that a newly minted noun derived from a foriegn language whose usage in English is redundant when it is translated and conjugated, it tweaks my ears the same way the aforementioned acronyms do. The difference however is that “ATM” is a noun to begin with and the addition of “machine” is completely superfluous to the understanding of “ATM.” You can correct someone saying “ATM machine” (at the risk of being told to shut the hell up) and you’d be linguistically correct in doing so. _Au jus_ isn’t a noun by itself though; it is preceded by a preposition. Turning the whole thing into a noun is a conscious decision to ignore the preposition despite the fact that by doing so you have to use another preposition in order to use it. (Or a pronoun or adverb) Unfortunately there’s no choice _but_ to use it this way because _au jus_ isn’t referred to any other way – it doesn’t have a proper noun. It’s just that it _should_. The real problem is its French usage. _Au jus_ is like _a la mode_ with respect to it referring to something nonspecific which is explicitly understood in its native context, yet makes no sense when translated whole into English. _I would like a slice of pie in the style._ _I would like a shaved beef sandwich with juice._ The first is a sentence fragment. The second is ambiguous. You therefore create a peculiar dichotomy when you mix the two languages. We know what pie is. We know what _a la mode_ means. We therefore transparently understand _pie a la mode_ despite the above. It just doesn’t stand up to grammatical scrutiny. Just so with _au jus_. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945/60 "2006-02-17T20:42:35Z")
Aren’t we all missing the point that “au jus” is usually just a salty, brown, foul fluid that ruins whatever it comes in contact with? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/au-jus-as-a-noun/344945.md?page=4)