Monday, March 4, 2013

pressing

Listening to Le Grand Entretien I've just discovered Bernard Cerquiglini  and his great snippets-of-linguistics program Merci Professeur.

He explains things about the French languagge - where the word merci come from, why there are circumflexes on some words (hâte, pâte...), all manner of things.

And he touches on some anglicisms too. For instance pressing. A word that you might get as an adjective in English ("I have a more pressing engagement.") or as a verb ("We were pressing flowers.") but hardly ever as a noun ("From the first pressing of the olives").

In French it means a dry cleaner's. See Google Translate:


Here's Bernard Cerquiglini on the subject: