Perhaps it is very “pretentious” of me to say this, but the meaning of that word seems to have strayed a long way from what it originally meant. So many people used “pretentious” to describe people who were out of their league intellectually, that common folk assumed it meant anyone who sounded high-minded. I don’t have a problem with this shift in usage, but I do have a problem with people attaching the negative connotation of the original meaning to their new meaning. Ok, so “using obscure words when not needed or showing intellect far beyond what is necessary” perhaps deserves some negative connotations, and perhaps even “elitist” does, but I swear that some people are using it to mean “sounding smarter than me”. And when you use it to mean that, you are wallowing in ignorance and probably should not be posting here.
I personally had never heard of the word “precis” before, and I have a master’s…in mathematics. Never took any English Literature classes in college, but I did take AP English. I find it to be a perfectly acceptable English word; it sounds as though it’s a completely different concept than a summary or abstract. If I was speaking to a lay audience, I would probably use something else, but if I had good reason to believe that my audience was familiar with it, I wouldn’t hesitate. I have no problems with people calling the inappropriate use of the word “precis” as pretentious, although I highly doubt I would myself (because that word doesn’t mean you think it means, damnit!).
This was my understanding as well. I’ve always considered it a “college word” though I use it at home because I have my son write “précis” (in quotes because he’s 15 and they’re pretty bad) about magazine articles I have him read as a way to get out of the doghouse and be able to play video games or watch TV.
So are you saying that I should intentionally say things like “sherbeRt” just because everyone else does? No thanks, sounds stupid to me.
Also, I think it’s perfectly easy to say “pap-i-yay mach-ay” with a plain old American accent.
Must be, because whenever I’ve heard it spoken in English (by Academics, Professors, other Learned People, and also on TV) it’s been pronounced “Pray-see”; which is also the pronounciation I use for the word.
Man, that is so true. There is an art to occasionaly, puposefully using a few words that you suspect are beyond the grasp of your audience, but in a context that they will be able to understand the words pretty well, and some of them will hopefully feel the urge to look them up (or ask you), in order to get a more precise definition – and thus LEARN something (gasp!). I gratefully learn all kinds of things when folks carefully do this with me (some of you Dopers are really good at this – not easy when the audience is so large and ill-defined.)
It’s analogous to the fact that a novice tennis player, say, will benefit enormously by playing against someone just a little better than she is – and that this isn’t always so much fun for the better player, but should be done graciously, since everone one of us is a teacher in some things and a student in others, at every stage of our lives.
(I hate to bring politics into MPSIMS, but many have observed that criticism against Pres. Obama often seems rooted in glowacks’ observation.)
First: For a few words in French which end in -is, the “s” really is pronounced – e.g., IIRC, “cassis” (mmm!). BUT “précis” is not one of those words, so the -s is not pronounced, in French.
Second: For many English words which were borrowed a long time ago from French, the -s is pronounced (i.e., the pronunciation has become more “anglicized”). BUT “precis” (no accent this time – it’s optional) is not one of those words – I believe it was borrowed relatively recently – so the -s in not pronounced in English, either.
BUT I wouldn’t be surprised if pronouncing the -s were becoming acceptable in some places and in some circles. Incipient anglicization, in other words.
(And, re: the earlier argument about whether “abstract” or “precis” is more commonly used, I am POSITIVE that “abstract” (even just in the restricted sense of “summary, usually of an academic article or book”) is MUCH more common, and that the poster who insisted otherwise must definitely come from “somewhere else” than the U.S. Canada, it turned out.)
Just dropping by to say I only heard the word precis recently, and I heard it from just about the most pretentious prick I can think of, so I associate it with pretentiousness.
I also recently heard someone refer to an ‘internal panopticon’ which would probably be more pretentious, but my experience of that person is that they are generally not pretentious.
So my entire response is based on whom I have heard say particular words, and in this case:
Precis = speaker is a pretentious ballwasher
Internal panopticon = speaker really wants to make a point about something
If you look carefully, though - you will note that “wrote a précis” uniformly returns results that are about this particular type of writing assignment, while “wrote an abstract” will return many results that are (as you would expect) specifically in reference to the sort of “abstract” you would find in published writing (which is altogether different) and about half (on the first page at least) do not refer to any sort of summarizing at all, but rather other senses of “abstract.”