Pseudo – foreign words
Kron


Pseudo – foreign words
•A number of words that look like foreign imports are not all that they seem
•
•Some have been formed on the model of an existing foreign word and, while they have the appearance
of a loanword, in fact they have no equivalent in the supposed source language

Nom de plume
•„an assumed name used by a writer instead of their real name, a pen name“
•Looks French
•Was formed in English from French words in the early 19th century
•Based on the pattern of the genuinly French nom de guerre
•„an assumed name under which a person engages in combat or some other activity or enterprise“

Bon viveur
•Pseudo-French coinage formed from the French words for „good“ and „living person“ to match the
earlier imported phrase bon vivant
•„a person who lives luxuriously and enjoys good food and drink“

Braggadocio
•Italian sounding
•Denoting boastful or arrogant behavior
•Originally the name Edmund Spenser gave to a boastful character in his poem The Faerie Queene
•Ending is based on the authentically Italian sufix  - occio
•Suggesting something large of its kind
•The first part comes from the English brag or braggart (a person who does a lot of bragging)

Foreign word as a template
•Sometimes a foreign word can act as a template for other, often humorous coinages


Literati
•From Latin
•Dates from the 17th century and refers to well educated people who are interested in literature.
•Their modern descendants include:
•Glitterati – fashionable people or celebrities
•Chatterati – another term for the chattering classes, intellectual or artistic people who express
liberal opinions
•Digerati – computing experts regarded as a class

Blitzkrieg
•Literally „a lightning war“
•Sitzkrieg – formed on the analogy of Blitzkrieg. A term used in English in the 1940s to convey the
idea of „a sit-down war“, a war, or a phase of a war, in which there is little or no active warfare
•

Russian and Yiddish sufix „-nik“
•As in words Sputnik or Kibbutznik
•Refusenik
•Peacenik
•Beatnik
•No-goodnik
•Used since the 1950s, to form English words denoting a person associated with a specified thing or
quality

EI – the Spanish definite article
•The equivalent of English the as in El Dorado and El Greco
•Since the 20 th century, it has been used in titles such as El Supremo
•Also used in such colloquial expressions as:
• El Cheapo – first recorded in the 1960s, this means „very cheap, of poor quality“
•The English adjective cheap made to resemble a Spanish word by the addition of an o

Costa Brava and Costa del Sol
•The Costa Brava and Costa del Sol have inspired other pseudo-Spanish names of resort areas such as
the:
• Costa Geriatrica, describing one largely frequented or inhabited by elderly people
•