journal of language contact 9 (2016) 477-512 brill.com/jlc The Semantic Development of Nineteenth-Century French Cookery Terms in English: Tendencies of Borrowings Relating to Dishes, Desserts and Confectionary Julia Schultz University of Heidelberg [email protected] Abstract French has long served English as the donor language par excellence in the field of cookery. A considerable number of culinary terms have been adopted into English down the ages (e.g. Chirol, 1973). Since cuisine is a field where France excels, the strong influx of borrowings from this area is by no means surprising. In the nineteenth cen- tury, too, French has been the source of a significant proportion of words and mean- ings which reflect the refinement of French gastronomy. The focus of this paper is on the culinary vocabulary borrowed from French in the nineteenth century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth oed) the term gastronomy itself, the art of preparing fine food, is a nineteenth-century borrow- ing which was adapted from the French gastronomie. The present study provides an analysis of the sense developments of the various borrowings from their earliest recorded uses in English to the present day in comparison with their equivalents in French. It will be interesting to see whether a) a particular meaning a borrowing assumes after its adoption is taken over from French (due to the continuing impact of French on English) or b) whether it represents an independent semantic change within English. Such a detailed investigation of the semantics of the culinary words of French provenance is missing in existing studies. Keywords language contact – lexicology – French influence on English – French culinary vocabulary (in English) – semantic change © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/19552629-00903003Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:04:20AM via free access <UN> 478 Schultz 1 Introduction 1.1 Previous Studies of the French Influence on the English Lexicon A considerable number of investigations concentrate on the impact of French on the English vocabulary. A number of scholars survey the chrono- logical distribution of French borrowings1 down the ages, such as Jespersen (1905), Baugh (1935), Koszul (1936), Mossé (1943), Pennanen (1971), Hillebrand (1976), Coleman (1995), Culpeper and Clapham, (1996), and others. There are also some studies which classify borrowings from French according to semantic criteria: the various lexical items are assigned to different subject fields, i.e. to various areas and spheres of life, such as military, arts, fashion and cuisine. The studies by Mackenzie (1939) and Chirol (1973) should be mentioned here. Mackenzie’s monograph is an early study of the French influence on the English language throughout its history. Mackenzie consults earliest editions of English translations of a multitude of French texts (e.g. La Bruyère’s Les Caractères, J. J. Rousseau’s Premier Discours) and the oed to find French borrowings and their first attested uses in English. He identifies important fields from which French words and phrases are taken over into English, as for instance nineteenth-century French literature (what he refers to as “La Littérature française du xixe siècle”), society and fashion (“La société et la mode”) and gastronomy (“La gastronomie”). Unfortunately there is no recent update of his survey. Chirol’s work Les “mots français” et le mythe de la France en anglais contemporain is a fairly extensive analysis of French bor- rowings in contemporary English. Yet, since it dates from 1973, the study does not reflect recent developments of the English lexicon. Chirol’s book includes 2500 Gallicisms most of which are recorded in Bliss’s Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases (1966). She identifies three essential semantic fields enriched by French during the last few centuries: “Un Art de vivre”, including the areas of cuisine, games, fashion, entertainment and travelling, “Un Savoir- faire”, encompassing borrowings from literature and art, and “Un Savoir- vivre”, comprising fields such as social behaviour and amourous relations. A number of brief surveys (e.g. the essays by Gibson (1973), Otman (1989), Swallow (1991) and Chira (2000)) outline a handful of recent acquisitions from French, among them several items which belong to the field of cooking like coq au vin and courgette (cf. Swallow 1991). Most of the previous studies, however, lack a systematic and detailed analysis of the semantic integration of the borrowings which entered English during the past few centuries. 1 For a definition of the term borrowing, see the ‘terminology’ chapter of this paper. journal of languageDownloaded contact from 9 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2016) 477-512 03:04:20AM via free access <UN> The Semantic Development of Nineteenth-Century French 479 Only very few analyses focus on French culinary terms. An exception is Bator’s (2011) survey, which concentrates on the semantic field of food. Bator explores quite an early period in the history of English: she looks at French culinary vocabulary in 14th century English. Her results are based on a careful perusal of Curye on Inglysch (English culinary manuscripts of the 14th century), which was edited in 1985 by Hieatt and Butler. Bator’s essay is illuminating in many ways. Yet it does not explore the sense developments of the fourteenth- century culinary terms in detail either. Schultz’s (2012) study, providing the first comprehensive appraisal of the semantic reception of 20th century borrowings from French, may serve as a frame of reference for future research into the influence of foreign languages on English. New media such as online dictionaries and corpus material allowed this type of investigation. The methodology developed by Schultz (2012) to research the various borrowings also constitutes a form of model for the pres- ent analysis of the 19th century French culinary terms. 1.2 The Oxford English Dictionary Online as a Source of French Borrowings The oed Online offers the data for the present investigation. The oed is pres- ently under revision. The electronic oed, consisting of the Second Edition launched in 1989 (henceforth oed2), the oed Additions Series, a series of sup- plementary volumes released in 1993 and 1997, and a considerable number of revised and new entries which will produce the planned 3rd Edition, or oed3 is searchable online at <http://www.oed.com>. The text of the electronic form of the oed is being updated every three months with the preliminary results of the oed3 revision.2 As already mentioned, the corpus data on which the present paper is based was collected from the oed. The sample of borrowings contained a consider- able proportion of borrowings from Standard French as well as some borrow- ings from different varieties of French (e.g. from Canadian French) and from French Creole. In addition, the sample comprised words with a complex ety- mological description in the oed, i.e. borrowings which were partly influenced by French and partly by another language. The oed also identifies possible acquisitions from French. That is, words and senses which may perhaps be adopted from French. The revised version of the oed distinguishes between lexical items that are possibly, probably or 2 For more information on the production of an electronic oed see Brewer, Charlotte. 2004. The electronification of the Oxford English Dictionary. Dictionaries 25: 1–43. journal of language contact 9 (2016) 477-512 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:04:20AM via free access <UN> 480 Schultz perhaps taken over from French.3 All the various types of borrowings included in the oed were taken into account in this study. The words under review were categorized as assumed from French as the immediate donor language. Hence, quenelle, for instance, specifying a variety of ball or roll including meat or fish, was classified as a borrowing of French quenelle, notwithstanding the fact that the word ultimately goes back to German Knödel. As the nineteenth century is very rich in cookery terms (in all, more than 300 lexical items have been identified as nineteenth-century French borrow- ings from gastronomy in the oed Online), I shall confine myself to the seman- tic analysis of the words denoting dishes, desserts and confectionary. Food items such as Comice, the name of a French variety of pear, products as for instance Neufchâtel, a type of French cheese, beverages and other borrowings somehow related to gastronomy will be excluded since describing them as well would go far beyond the scope of this study. (These types of word will be dealt with in separate papers.) 1.3 Aims and Methodology of the Present Study More than a mere count of the French culinary terms adopted into English in the nineteenth century, this paper will provide a detailed investigation and descriptions of the sense developments of the various borrowings. To compare the semantics of a borrowing included in the oed with that of its French source, French dictionaries such as the Trésor de la langue française (hence- forth tlf), the 48 volumes of Datations et documents lexicographiques (ddl), a database which encompasses additional documentary evidence supplement- ing the tlf, and the Robert Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique (hence- forth referred to as the Grand Robert) were consulted. It is important to identify the type of change in meaning a borrowing under- goes after its earliest attested use. To classify sense developments, the types of semantic change generally accepted as the basic standard categories (i.e. met- aphor, metonymy, broadening, narrowing, amelioration and pejoration) will serve as a frame of reference.4 3 For details on the revision of the etymologies in the oed see Durkin, Philip. 1999. Root and Branch: Revising the etymological component of the oed. Transactions of the Philological Society 97: 1–49. 4 For the essential categories of semantic change, see Durkin, Philip.