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What happened to the n in restaurateur?

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Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#21

Post by cocoto »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #20

Damn. My French is pretty solid, and used to be good enough to do well in masters-level French literature classes at a French university in France, back when I was studying that kind of thing on a full-time basis. (I’m a native speaker of American English.) I’d have incorrectly spelled it with the N when speaking English. When speaking French, the word restaurateur, in my experience, has generally referred to someone…

No, restaurateur is often used here in France, simply for someone owning a business and working in “restauration”. When using restaurateur instead of propriétaire we are emphasizing the work, because someone can be the owner without actually managing/working in it.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#22

Post by banannaise »

tome wrote: post #9

This is just begging the question! So "restaurateur" was first, but did "restaurant" get an "n"? Why isn't it "restaurat"? The reason is that in French (ultimately from Latin) "-ateur" means "person who" and "-ant" means roughly "ing". So a "restaurater" is someone who restores and "restaurant" means "restoring" (i.e. a restoring soup, subsequently place).

You consult a restorator, who gives you a restorant!

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#23

Post by karaterobot »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #7

Do they also ask for the meaning of entree in this test? Even Miriam Webster has a note that Americans mistakenly use it for main course (completely incorrectly) because French sounds fancier. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entr%C3%A9e#:~:te...

Semantic drift is not "incorrect".

At first it's a mistake, then eventually it's not.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#24

Post by wahern »

jauco wrote: post #16

This just pushes the question one step further. Why did the chefs who used to be employed by aristocrats, when they started opening public eating places. Not call them auberge (french for tavern or inn) or cantine or hotel or bistrot or even cabaret (which used to mean small restaurant) but instead picked ‘restaurant’ an, at that time, medical term.

Based on https://www.etymonline.com/word/restaurateur and https://parisfoodhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/what-were-very... is seems the choice of wording was one part legal hack and one part marketing gimmick.

TL;DR: Apparently only traiteurs were permitted to sell meals. Restaurants were marketed as a kind of (I guess) upscale health service, originally only selling fancy broths. One of the early restaurateurs is documented as using the advertisement, "Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, & ego restaurabo vos" ("Come to me, all of you whose stomachs are in distress, and I will restore you", an allusion to Matthew 11:28, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.")

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#25

Post by amyjess »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #6
decimalenough wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term is recent. Places where you can pay for food are ancient.

I was thinking about that... Is there a distinction between a restaurant where you can order specific dishes (made to order?) vs a place where you just got whatever is available?

I believe the term is "short order" for when you have dishes cooked to order.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#26

Post by giraffe_lady »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #11
giraffe_lady wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore in english, because the second went basically completely extinct except a few location- or activity-specific exceptions like food trucks and sport concessions.

Not really. Or at least not completely extinct in South India. Some of my favorite childhood memories are from these messes (short for mess hall, I assume). You go there, pay what they ask, eat what they serve. MTR, Brindavan on MG Road (though that's long gone), Iyer Mess in Malleshwaram. What they lack in choice they usually make up for in taste. You're right that they have a more traditional ambience and newer res…

Yeah sorry I intended there to be a more clear constraint on the claim I was making. It's mostly extinct in the anglosphere, so english doesn't really differentiate. But the concept itself is still popular globally.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#27

Post by tetromino_ »

decimalenough wrote: post #4
jasonpeacock wrote: post #2

Fascinating history - I didn't realize that restaurants were so recent. But language evolves to follow common use, and "restauranteur" is also correct: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restauranteur

The term is recent. Places where you can pay for food are ancient.

I'm not sure about that. Since ancient times there were places where you could pay for food, but that was always a side business of an establishment whose main purpose was either (a) selling alcohol (or, in some places, coffee or tea) or (b) providing lodging for travelers.

I suspect that an establishment whose main purpose is selling food to order may be a fairly recent innovation.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#28

Post by bombcar »

jauco wrote: post #16

This just pushes the question one step further. Why did the chefs who used to be employed by aristocrats, when they started opening public eating places. Not call them auberge (french for tavern or inn) or cantine or hotel or bistrot or even cabaret (which used to mean small restaurant) but instead picked ‘restaurant’ an, at that time, medical term.

Based on the other comment, maybe it's why many (most?) sodas we have today come from being marketed as cure-alls.

Re: What happened to the n in restaurateur?

#30

Post by thaumasiotes »

tome wrote: post #9

This is just begging the question! So "restaurateur" was first, but did "restaurant" get an "n"? Why isn't it "restaurat"? The reason is that in French (ultimately from Latin) "-ateur" means "person who" and "-ant" means roughly "ing". So a "restaurater" is someone who restores and "restaurant" means "restoring" (i.e. a restoring soup, subsequently place).

Huh, the article immediately suggests a related question to me:

> BTW, the feminine version of a restaurateur was “restauratrice.”

That makes perfect sense, since the feminine agentive suffix in Latin is -rix. But I thought the feminine agentive ending in French was -euse! Where did we get "masseuse"?

Wiktionary suggests that -euse is an alternate equivalent of -rice, derived from Latin -osus (which has no agentive meaning at all; it means "full of [whatever]", and transformed into a French agentive suffix by people who felt that -eur and -euse must be related because they sound so similar.

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