# english words of french origin with an accent
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 28, 2004, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461 "2004-04-28T11:42:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/1 "2004-04-28T11:42:13Z")
Chatting with my mother, we wondered about french words used in english and which kept the french accent. She mentionned “attaché-case”, and I remebered “entrée”. Are there any others?
Thanks in advance.
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### Author:  [@Ross](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ross)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/2 "2004-04-28T11:56:56Z")
I’m pretty sure “naive” used to have an accent even when used in English. However I’ve never used it due to typing everything.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/3 "2004-04-28T12:18:27Z")
The accents are always dropped eventually. The most obvious example is résumé, which is now written without the accents, despite the chance of confusion.
But this is never uniform, so you’ll still see examples like entrée or née from time to time.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/4 "2004-04-28T12:20:00Z")
Bête noire.
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### Author:  [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/5 "2004-04-28T12:22:41Z")
Hôtel =\> Hostel
Fôret =\> Forest
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### Author:  [@Gest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gest)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/6 "2004-04-28T12:23:24Z")
Fête, à la carte or à la mode, chargé d’affaires, après-ski, coup d’état. Any food and drink words with crème in them, déjà vu, fiancé, maître d’, matinée, naïve, papier mâché, pièce de résistance, protégé, raison d’être, risqué, soirée, touché, vis-à-vis, sauté, flambée, tête-à-tête, fin de siècle, bon appétit, apéritif.
Ross, on the off chance you use a Mac, you can use diacritics with the _option_ key and another letter. For example, option and U will give you a hovering umlaut that you can the place a vowel or Y under.
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### Author:  [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/7 "2004-04-28T12:31:55Z")
Risqué, né(e), divorcé(e), ragoût, garçon, . . .
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/8 "2004-04-28T13:53:59Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> The accents are always dropped eventually. The most obvious example is résumé, which is now written without the accents, despite the chance of confusion.
>
> .
Sometimes people still pronounce it in a sort of bastardized French-English way, as if trying to pronounce the accents, as “RAY-zew-MAYYY”. For some reason it bugs me when they do that.
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### Author:  [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/9 "2004-04-28T14:51:48Z")
Café?
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### Author:  [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/10 "2004-04-28T15:06:26Z")
As a matter of common practice, I’d say none of them. The accent just isn’t part of English, so any French word that is used enough to become part of the language is going to be commonly spelled without the accents. I’ve routinely seen most of the words listed here spelled without accents, and I don’t think anyone would object to that even in formal writing.
Which isn’t to say you won’t still see them spelled with accents occasionally, generally when someone is trying to be fancy.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/11 "2004-04-28T15:08:05Z")
> [@athelas](#):
>
> Hôtel =\> Hostel
> Fôret =\> Forest
I wouldn’t point out this small error, but it’s actually interesting. In a trivial sort of way.
The French word for “forest” is “forêt”, not “fôret”. In this context, the _accent circonflexe_ indicates that there used to be an “s” following the letter. Put it back and you get the English word. It’s a case of English borrowing a word from French and keeping the (at least part of the) archaic spelling. See:
Château -\> Castle
Hôte -\> Host
Côte -\> Coast
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/12 "2004-04-28T15:14:09Z")
I know a fistful of French words, but I don’t use them unless I have to. I don’t want to confuse someone who doesn’t know those same words. Furthermore, if the listener _does_ know those words, she’d be shocked at my terrible American enunciation. :o
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### Author:  [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/13 "2004-04-28T16:11:40Z")
Cliché. Passé. Blasé. Risqué. Purée. There’s the makings of a limerick there, surely.
Séance. Débutante. Retroussé.
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### Author:  [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/14 "2004-04-28T17:50:14Z")
Slight hijack… so a youth hostel in France would be a hôtel?
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### Author:  [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/15 "2004-04-28T19:17:34Z")
Just for the sake of confusion, I think a youth hostel is an auberge de jeunesse (and I might have spelled that slightly wrong as it has been a long time.)
Incidentally, though, didn’t France, quite a few years ago now, decide officially to drop the accents on certain words? I recall thinking it a bit pointless and silly of them AND annoying, on the grounds that if I had to sit in school and learn them all, why should they go around changing the damn language? 🙂
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### Author:  [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/16 "2004-04-28T19:25:03Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#):
>
> Sometimes people still pronounce it in a sort of bastardized French-English way, as if trying to pronounce the accents, as “RAY-zew-MAYYY”. For some reason it bugs me when they do that.
Are you saying that you pronounce “résumé” in the same way as the English word “resume”?
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### Author:  [@Dignan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dignan)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/17 "2004-04-28T20:36:22Z")
How about denoument? (Sorry about the lack of accents.)
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### Author:  [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/18 "2004-04-28T21:48:25Z")
How about “niche” and “clique”?
It drives me insane when I hear people say it the non-accented way - “nitch” and “click”…sounds like the name of some kind of bug that lives in your armpits.
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### Author:  [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/19 "2004-04-28T21:55:29Z")
Eek, yes. And people who pronounce “rout” and “route” in the same way. ☹
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### Author:  [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2004, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-words-of-french-origin-with-an-accent/242461/20 "2004-04-28T22:59:24Z")
One that I can think of that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: élan. This sometimes still appears with the accent. Two that formerly were written with accents but hardly ever (if it all) are still written this way: rôle, élite.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of these words were introduced into English before French began to use accents, though I don’t have access to the OED now, so I can’t tell how old they are. If they weren’t initially spelled with the accent, adding it is entirely _prétentieux_, New Yorker-style. (So, for that matter, is italicizing ‘foreign’ words.)
Even if they were accented in French at the time of borrowing, they should have lost their accents after a hundred years or so. I think the accents are only legitimate if there’s a minimal pair in English, as with resume and résumé.
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