puer

Forms

puer^[1] Old French puir, the usual form until the 17th century, beside the rarer puier.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French puir, inherited from Vulgar Latin *putīre, an alteration of Classical Latin putēre (“to be rotten, to stink”), which moved the verb into the conjugation in -īre.^[2][3][4][5] The Latin verb belongs with pūs (“pus, matter”).^[3][6] The Petit Robert traces the family to an Indo-European root Proto-Indo-European *pu- (“to rot”), also seen in Ancient Greek πύον (púon, “pus”), German faul (“rotten”) and English foul.^[7]

The present form with the ending -er is found sporadically from the late 13th century but became usual only in the 17th; the TLFi suggests that the plural forms of the present tense and verbs such as diminuer and remuer drew the verb into the first conjugation.^[2][3] The participle puant, recorded as pudent about 980, shows that an older form with /d/ preceded the Old French verb.^[3]

Cognate with Romanian puți, Italian putire, Occitan pudir and Catalan pudir, and with Old Occitan pudir.^[7][3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Chrétien de Troyes uses puir intransitively, meaning “to stink”, in Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion (1176–1181).^[2]

Semantic evolution

The intransitive sense “to give off a foul smell” has stayed the main one.^[3][2] A transitive use with an object appeared in the 13th century (puier in the prose Lancelot), meaning “to give off a bad smell of something”;^[2] the Dictionnaire historique dates this concrete transitive sense from Molière (1668) and the figurative one, “to show plainly an unpleasant trait”, from Montaigne (1580), who wrote of people puans au dedans toute sorte de vices “stinking within of every kind of vice”.^[3][2][8] From the early 20th century a person can be the subject of this figurative use, as in il pue la bêtise.^[3]

Familiar French sometimes uses the verb neutrally, for “to smell strongly”, and its figurative uses are always pejorative, extending to “to be unbearable”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 980 – The participle pudent “stinking” is recorded.^[3]
• 1176–1181 – Chrétien de Troyes uses puir “to stink”.^[2]
• 13th century – A transitive use, puier, appears in the prose Lancelot.^[2]
• late 13th century – The variant puer is first found, in Baudouin de Condé.^[6][8]
• 1580 – Montaigne uses the verb figuratively.^[2][3]
• 1673 – Ménage gives the infinitive puer, which dictionaries record from Richelet (1680).^[2]
• 1762 – The Académie still gives the old present forms je pus, tu pus, il put.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To stink, to give off a very bad smell: cette poubelle pue.^[7][2][1]
2. (transitive) To reek of something: il pue le tabac.^[7][1]
3. (transitive, figurative) To show plainly some unpleasant quality: un quartier qui pue l'argent.^[7][3]
4. (familiar, figurative) To be awful or repulsive.^[1][3]

Word family

• puant
• empuantir
• puanteur

Related words

• pus
• putride
• Latin puteō

Usage notes

Until the 17th century the verb was puir, and the Académie still gave the present je pus, tu pus, il put in 1762.^[2] The phrase les fromages qui puent, supposedly how Americans see the French, was spread by the television programme Les Guignols de l'info.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ 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
4. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ a b Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
7. ^ a b c d e Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette