Etymologically
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tache

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Pronunciation

Forms

tache f (plural taches)[1] Old French teche (about 1100), taje, take (late 11th century); tache from about 1160–1175.[2][3][4]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.[2][5] The explanation most often given (Wartburg in the FEW, Bloch and Wartburg, Rey) makes it inherited from Old French tache, inherited from Vulgar Latin *tacca (“spot, sign”), borrowed under the late Empire from Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌹𐌺𐌽𐍃 (taikns, “sign”) (compare German Zeichen), the /k/ being doubled under the influence of the following /n/.[6][3][7] The Old French form with /e/ would come from a type *tecca, after the Gothic diphthong had become /ē/;[6][3][2] Italian keeps both, Italian tacca (“notch, spot”) and Italian tecca (“defect”), beside Old Occitan taca and Catalan taca.[6][3][2] The wide spread of the word and the palatalization of its /k/ show that it entered Latin under the late Empire.[6]

The TLFi finds this hard to accept, for its sound changes and because a word meaning only “sign” does not easily explain the senses “stain”, “mark on the skin” and “quality”.[2] Following Joppich-Hagemann, it takes tacher as the base of the family, from a popular Latin *tagicō from tangō (“to touch”), influenced by tingō (“to dye”), with the forms in /e/ from *tigicō from the second verb; the noun would then be a deverbal.[2][5] Guiraud similarly derived the verb from the supine of the verb “to touch”, a stain being a fingermark.[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Chanson de Roland (about 1100) has teche in the neutral sense of a distinguishing quality, good or bad: tetches a males e mult grant felonie; the glosses of Rashi (late 11th century) have taje for a stain left by a dirty substance.[2][3][9]

Semantic evolution

The sense “quality” lasted until the 14th century, or the 17th for Bloch and Wartburg, by which time the negative value had won.[3][6] From the 12th century it meant a moral flaw or a stain on one's honour, as in sans tache and l'Agneau sans tache (1553), Christ.[2][3][9] A mark on the skin is from the 12th century, giving tache de vin (1694) and taches de rousseur; the natural markings of an animal's coat or plumage are from about 1393.[2][3]

Mersenne wrote of the sun's spots in 1634.[10][3] In painting the word was first pejorative (1755), as in faire tache, then from Taine (1865) a patch of colour standing out against its background, which led to tachisme.[2][3] Faire tache d'huile “to spread gradually” is from the 19th century, and in familiar French une tache is a hopeless person.[3][4]

Timeline

  • Late 11th century – Taje, a stain, in Rashi's glosses.[2]
  • c. 1100 – Teche “quality”, in the Chanson de Roland.[2]
  • First half of the 12th century – A stain on one's honour, in the Oxford Psalter.[2]
  • c. 1175 – The form tache, in Benoît de Sainte-Maure.[2]
  • c. 1393 – Markings on an animal.[2]
  • 1634 – Sunspots, in Mersenne.[10]
  • 1755 – In painting, in Diderot.[2]
  • 1835 – Faire tache d'huile, in the Académie.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A stain, a dirty mark: une tache de graisse.[11][2]
  2. A spot or patch of a different colour: taches de rousseur, les taches du léopard, taches solaires, sunspots.[12][5]
  3. A mark on the skin, tache de vin, a birthmark.[5][3]
  4. (figurative) A blemish, a stain on one's honour: sans tache.[2][3]
  5. Faire tache: to clash, to be out of place, faire tache d'huile, to spread.[3][4]
  6. (painting) A patch of colour.[2][12]
  7. (familiar) A useless, contemptible person.[3][1]

Word family

  • tacheté
  • tacher
  • tacheter
  • entacher
  • détacher
  • tachisme

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s 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 p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  4. ^ a b c d Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
  5. ^ a b c d Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  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. 17, 293a
  8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
  9. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
  10. ^ a b Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
  11. ^ Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)
  12. ^ a b Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)