Why Is There No 'N' in 'Restaurateur'?
How timely. We were just arguing in the office yesterday about the word restaurateur and that "doesn't it have an n in it?" Dave Cook of Eating in Translation must have read our minds, as he posted a link to an explanation of where the n went:
Restaurateur is the noun created from the verb restaurer by replacing the -er ending of the verb with the -ateur ending for for a man (its female equivalent, restauratrice, only appeared in 1767) who carries out the action. Hence, no n. At first, he was an artisan who restored or repaired objects. In the seventeenth century, he was an assistant who set broken bones for a surgeon. In the 1770s he became a man skilled in creating this special soup called a restaurant.
See, [name redacted]? Told ya, so!
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7 Comments:
Well, I've been saying and spelling this wrong for my entire life. Live and learn!
louclakat at 12:07PM on 02/21/09
Thanks. That's one of my pet peeves. :)
Ali at 12:26PM on 02/21/09
I've got a serious opposition to the "word" restaurateur... not least of which is that it is silly and makes my language sensors queasy.
lexophile at 12:59PM on 02/21/09
This was a big lesson I learned in my first job at a city/regional mag. I had in big type on the front page "Restauaranteur" - I got a lot of letters over that.
bozichsl at 3:13PM on 02/21/09
Languages evoulve, changes are made, colour becomes color, etc., etc. IOW, IMHO, IDK & IDC. ;-)
LunaPierCook at 6:13PM on 02/21/09
I'm with lexophile on this one. It's right up there with "toothsome" and "cloying" for me. :)
buffy at 3:53PM on 02/22/09
Name redacted huh? Wonder who it was... Ed?
wunami at 5:27PM on 02/22/09