Etymologically
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méchant

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /me.ʃɑ̃/[1]

Forms

méchant (feminine méchante, masculine plural méchants, feminine plural méchantes)[1] Old French mescheant (about 1165), meskant (early 14th century), meschant (14th century); méchant from 1549.[2][3] The Académie spelled it meschant in 1694 and 1718, méchant from 1740.[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French mescheant (“unlucky”), the present participle of the old verb mescheoir (“to befall ill”) (1155–1637),[4][5][3] formed from mé- and cheoir (“to fall”), the old form of choir,[4][5][6] itself from Latin cadō (“to fall”).[7] Properly the word described someone to whom things fall out badly; its sense development parallels that of mauvais.[8][4][1]

Compare Picard mécant and Walloon mèchant.[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide (1165–1170) has mescheant “unlucky”;[4] in Old French it meant “ill-starred, wretched”, very close to the first sense of malheureux.[5]

Semantic evolution

Of things it meant “worthless, paltry” in Chrétien's Cligès (1176), a sense still found in literary style (un méchant stylo).[4][5] From there it seems to have reached the modern sense “bad”, first of something lacking good qualities or of abstract things such as a look or an air (1360–1370), then of a person (1549, in Picard).[5][4] The sense “bad” drove out the old one in the 16th century.[5]

As a noun (1360–1370) a méchant was a person bent on doing harm, often in a religious context; this use is now literary or playful, from children's language.[5][4] Faire le méchant (1690, Furetière) meant “to fly into a rage”; it is now said mostly of children, with affectionate indulgence.[5][4] By antiphrasis, sports slang of 1922 used méchant for “terrific, tremendous”.[5][2] The adverb méchamment is first found as mescheandement (1280).[5]

Timeline

  • 1155 – The verb mescheoir, in Wace.[4]
  • 1165–1170 – Mescheant “unlucky”, in Chrétien de Troyes.[4]
  • 1176 – “Worthless”, in Cligès.[4]
  • 1280 – Mescheandement.[5]
  • 1360–1370 – “Bad”; the noun “wicked person”.[4]
  • 1549 – The spelling méchant (Robert Estienne).[2]
  • 1690 – Faire le méchant.[4]
  • 1922 – Slang “terrific”.[5]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Mean, unkind, nasty; wicked.[1][9]
  2. (before the noun) Dangerous or unpleasant: une méchante affaire, méchante humeur.[9]
  3. (before the noun, literary or dated) Worthless, paltry, wretched; insignificant: un méchant billet.[9][5]
  4. (before the noun, slang) Terrific, tremendous.[9][5]

Noun

  1. A wicked person; in fiction, the villain, the bad guy, faire le méchant, to turn nasty (often of a child).[1][5]

Word family

  • méchamment

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
  3. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  6. ^ Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
  7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 27b
  8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
  9. ^ a b c d Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert