squelette

Pronunciation

• IPA: /skə.lɛt/^[1]

Forms

squelette m (plural squelettes)^[1] Scelette (1552), squelete (before 1585), Greek-looking sceletos, skeletos in Paré and Montaigne, and squelette from before 1660.^[2] Often feminine in the 17th century.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sceletus,^[5][1] from Ancient Greek σκελετός (skeletós, “dried up; a dried body, mummy”);^{[5][2][6][1][7]} Rey and Bloch and Wartburg take it straight from Greek.^[2][6] The Greek adjective comes from σκέλλω (skéllō, “to dry up”),^[2][4][8] a verb of obscure origin that has been compared with Germanic words for “dry, thin” such as English shallow.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pontus de Tyard used scelette in 1552 for the bony frame of a vertebrate after death.^[5][4] Ambroise Paré (1562) explains that the Greeks call the whole structure of the bones sceletos, “dry anatomy”.^[5][8]

Semantic evolution

Skeletons mounted for teaching medicine are mentioned by Furetière (1690).^[5] Bossuet made the skeleton the figure of Death (1662),^[2][4] and by exaggeration it was said of a very thin person (1669), as Ronsard had already written “un schelette je semble”.^[5][2]

At the end of the 17th century it came to mean any framework: the hull of a ship (1690), later a building or a landscape.^[2][5] Of a work of the mind it means a bare outline (Rollin, 1726–1728); Voltaire wrote that a dictionary without quotations is a skeleton.^[5][4] The adjective squelettique dates from 1834.^[6]

Timeline

• 1552 – Scelette (Pontus de Tyard).^[5][6]
• 1562 – Paré's sceletos.^[5]
• 1586 – Ronsard: “un schelette je semble”.^[5]
• 1662 – Death personified (Bossuet).^[2][4]
• 1669 – A very thin person.^[5][2]
• 1690 – The frame of a ship (Furetière).^[5][2]
• 1760 – Voltaire's “un dictionnaire sans citations est un squelette”.^[5]
• 1834 – Squelettique.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A skeleton, the bony frame of a vertebrate.^[9][1]
2. (figurative) A very thin person.^[9][1]
3. A framework or structure: le squelette d'un navire.^[9][5]
4. The bare outline of a work.^[4][5]

Word family

• squelettique

Related words

• English skeleton

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 Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b c d e f g Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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
6. ^ a b c d e 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. 12, 3a
8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
9. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert