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The usual noun and adjective in English is patronymic, but as a noun this exists in free variation alongside patronym. [a] The first part of the word patronym comes from Greek πατήρ patēr 'father' (GEN πατρός patros whence the combining form πατρο- patro-); [3] the second part comes from Greek ὄνυμα onyma, a variant form of ὄνομα onoma 'name'. [4]
Generally, words coming from French often retain a higher register than words of Old English origin, and they are considered by some to be more posh, elaborate, sophisticated, or pretentious. However, there are exceptions: weep , groom and stone (from Old English) occupy a slightly higher register than cry , brush and rock (from French).
à la short for (ellipsis of) à la manière de; in the manner of/in the style of [1]à la carte lit. "on the card, i.e. menu"; In restaurants it refers to ordering individual dishes "à la carte" rather than a fixed-price meal "menu".
It excludes combinations of words of French origin with words whose origin is a language other than French — e.g., ice cream, sunray, jellyfish, killjoy, lifeguard, and passageway— and English-made combinations of words of French origin — e.g., grapefruit (grape + fruit), layperson (lay + person), mailorder, magpie, marketplace, surrender ...
Such systems were in wide use throughout Europe in the first millennium CE, but were replaced by binomial systems. The Icelandic system is still patronymic. More complex systems like Arabic system, consisting of paedonymic (son's name), given name, patronymic and one or two bynames. Different cultures have different conventions for personal names.
-ell (English spelling for French -el, diminutive) [citation needed]-el (Northern French and Occitan, French -eau) [citation needed]-ema (Suffix of Frisian origin, given by Napoleon Bonaparte who used suffixes like these to keep a record of people's origins within the Netherlands) [citation needed]-ems [citation needed]
The Greek word μητρωνυμικός mētrōnymikos [3] was then borrowed into Latin in a partially Latinised form (Greek mētēr, dialectally mātēr, corresponds to Latin mater), [4] as matronomicus. These words were a source for coining the English matronymic as the female counterpart to patronymic (first attested in English in 1612). [5]
A pseudo-French expression in English is a word or expression in English that has the appearance of having been borrowed from French, but which in fact was created in English and does not exist in French. Several such French expressions have found a home in English. The first continued in its adopted language in its original obsolete form ...