Here’s a pleasing bit of etymology.
I just posted in the Favourite non-English quotation thread over in IMHO. I went with Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? (But where are the snows of yesteryear?) - and while I know the quote, I don’t know the source, so I had to look it up.
The source is Ballade des dames du temps jadis, and the wiki page contains this little nugget.
Particularly famous is its interrogative refrain, Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? This was translated into English by [Dante Gabriel] Rossetti as “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”, for which he coined the new word yester-year to translate Villon’s antan. The French word was used in its original sense of “last year”, although both antan and the English yesteryear have now taken on a wider meaning of “years gone by”.
My bold. So: not just a brilliant Pre-Raphaelite painter, huh?
j