The English Have a Word for It : . . . But Some Americans Can’t Resist the <i> Je Ne Sais Quoi</i> of Foreign Phrases

Reader Bradley Brewer complains that he is puzzled and annoyed by the foreign words and phrases he encounters in his newspaper.

He cites several recent examples:

“Ross’ self-portrayal turns his back on a theatrical mise en scene . . . .”

“Calloway had one of the best . . . big bands of the late 1930s and early ‘40s, but his voice, personality and showmanship were its raison d’etre . . . .”

“The piece is a long-haired standing nude, a woman ‘perhaps even a little more’ zaftig than the famous armless lady of the Louvre . . . .”

“ Pere et fils , the Corwins concede there is something special in their relationship . . . .”

“And who wants to schlep down to Wilshire with the kids?”

“He thought of the ‘40s as a perfection of a way to walk, to dress, to wear the hair, the maquillage . . . .”

I concede that it is indeed disconcerting to run into a foreign word or phrase when you’re reading English, especially when you know that there must be a perfectly good English word for whatever is being said.

English is second to no language in its abundance of words, in the universality of its applications, but we writers are tempted to throw in a foreign phrase when it sounds apropos, or seems to lend a touch of learning or class.

In the example cited above, the simple word scene probably would have served as well as mise en scene , but perhaps it would not have conveyed the flavor the author sought.

Reason for being certainly would have done the job as well as raison d’etre , and it wouldn’t have exasperated those who don’t know the French phrase.

Father and son would have defined Norman Corwin and his father just as well as pere et fils , without antagonizing the Francophobes.

Not being familiar with Yiddish, I had to look up zaftig in Leo Rosten’s classic work, “The Joys of Yiddish.” Zaftig , I find, means plump, buxom, well-rounded (of a female).

Rosten says, “ Zaftig describes in one word what it takes two hands, outlining an hourglass figure, to do.”

A very useful word, and in the above instance it is perfectly appropriate. Not that buxom wouldn’t have done as well.

Again I turn to Rosten for a definition of schlep . It means to drag, to perform slowly, lazily, inefficiently. It seems to have been used appropriately in this instance, but I wonder if drag wouldn’t have served just as well.

Maquillage turns out to mean nothing more than makeup or cosmetics. Well, why didn’t that writer say so?

The answer, of course, is that the foreign phrase gives one’s prose a certain je ne sais quoi that an ordinary English word or phrase does not.

I know what je ne sais quoi means because when I was in high school, that phrase was very popular with girls who had studied a bit of French or read Edna St. Vincent Millay or for other reasons thought themselves sophisticated.

It usually cropped up when one of them was trying to describe someone’s character, or a literary quality, or the essence of some work of art. “Oh, it has, you know,” they would say, “a certain je ne sais quoi .” As far as I can remember, the phrase was invariably preceded by “a certain.”

For a long time I was impressed by the use of je ne sais quoi . It always sounded so stylish, so erudite, so polished. Finally it occurred to me that, in fact, it doesn’t mean anything at all. To say je ne sais quoi simply means that you can’t think of the right word in English, or you don’t know what you are talking about.

Those same girls used to say “ au contraire “ instead of “on the contrary,” when they chose to disagree with me in some argument. I really hated that.

I suspect that many of us use foreign phrases for the same reasons that the high school girls of my acquaintance used je ne sais quoi . It implies that one is privy to levels of perception and resources of language that are not available to ordinary folk.

I myself am given to this affectation. The other day, I used the phrase quid pro quo when I could just as well have said tit for tat.

But a few Latin phrases are de rigueur for those who want to add a soupcon of classic learning to their prose or speech. It is chic to describe something or someone as the ne plus ultra , which means “the ultimate.” Infra dig is extremely sophisticated because it is an abbreviation of infra dignitatem -- “beneath one’s dignity”--and implies a casual familiarity with Latin. And there are many opportunities for solemnly intoning de mortuis nil nisi bonum -- “say nothing but good of the dead.”

Many French and Latin phrases have come to be the standard way of saying certain things in English, and to use their English equivalents is itself pretentious. Everyone knows that pie a la mode means pie with ice cream , and it is neither patriotic nor commendable to avoid the French phrase.

I speak often of joie de vivre when I know perfectly well that it simply means joy of life. But joie de vivre conveys an effervescence that “joy of life” does not.

E. B. White, the ne plus ultra of American prose stylists, himself avoided the use of foreign words, explaining that he wrote in English.

Well, that was OK for White, but some of us schleppers need a certain je ne sais quoi now and then.