Faux pas definition4/15/2023 ![]() ![]() Examples of faux pasĮvery year numerous tourists fall foul of local customers failing to brush up on the cultural faux pas of the destinations they visit. However, we do make a distinction in the pronunciation-the singular faux pas is pronounced, but the plural faux pas is pronounced with a “z” at the end. Faux pas is how you spell both the plural and the singular form of the phrase. In the English language, we more or less take the page from the French’s book. The plural is written the same as the singular, faux pas, and there’s no difference in pronunciation either. We know that faux pas, the singular form, is pronounced. Since faux pas is a French phrase, let’s see how the French pluralize it. But since that’s not always possible, there has to be a way to say “more than one faux pas”-it has to have a plural. If you really have to make social blunders, it would be best to keep them to a minimum. This meaning isn’t so far removed from the original-“to make a breach of good manners,” or “to compromise one’s reputation.” The plural of faux pas : French So to say that someone made a faux pas is to say that someone made a social blunder. But in faux pas, it means false, and the whole phrase means “false step,” or “misstep.”įaux pas is most commonly used to denote an embarrassing mistake made in a social context. ![]() The two words that constitute the phrase are faux, which means “false,” and pas, which means “dance step.” Over time, faux has also acquired the meaning “fake,” which is the sense we’re familiar with from the phrase faux fur. I have no doubt that we shall all be making faux pas along the way.Write with Grammarly The origin and the meaning of faux pasįaux pas is a loan phrase from French that’s been used in English since the seventeenth century-the 1670s, to be more precise. The last two words probably were meant to counteract any faux pas created by suggesting that a quadriplegic might attend parties.Īt two o'clock in the morning, the streets still swarming with young Japanese in American sports cars, girls sitting on the back of convertibles, gangsters and whores emerging from nightclubs, moving on to the next place, shirtless gaijins howling at the moon from upstairs whorehouses, I staggered down dark back streets, hit some more bars and, finding myself incongruously hungry again, and wanting to soak up some of the sea of alcohol in my stomach, committed the ultimate in Tokyo faux pas-I ate a McDonald's hamburger while I walked. Hands grasp, pedipalpi quiver, spiracles ripple, pincers snap like scissors, and other ill-defined extrusions appear and at once vanish in a roiling tumult of glistening carapaces that melt into whipping tails, in snarls of coarse hair that smooth into scaly flanks, expressing a biological chaos that makes Curtis's confusion in the twins' bathroom seem, by comparison, merely an amusing faux pas. He had refrained from commenting on the obvious comparisons between them, while she had had sense enough to stay on firm emotional ground after making the faux pas about loneliness.īut she had been forced to tell the truth, once the initial faux pas had been made, in justice to the innocent housemaids. If nothing else, she would never be seen committing a social faux pas.
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