étage

See also: etage, Etage, and étagé

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French étage. Doublet of stage.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /əˈtɑːʒ/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /əˈtaːʒ/

Noun

étage (plural étages)

1. (meteorology) Any of the distinctive forms that a cloud takes relating to the altitude of its base, either "low", "middle", or "high", and designated by the respective prefixes strato-, alto-, and cirro-.

Anagrams

• Getae, e-gate

French

Etymology

From Old French estage: ester +‎ -age (see also stage), or possibly from a Vulgar Latin *stāticum, from Latin stāre.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /e.taʒ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

étage m (plural étages)

1. (building) floor, storey

   Au premier étage. ― On the first (UK)/second (US) floor

2. (geology) stage, division of a geological period

   Historiquement, les fossiles sont les principaux critères de définition des étages, mais cette méthode n’est pas applicable partout — et même lorsqu’elle l’est, elle est désormais souvent corrélée à d’autres indicateurs stratigraphiques : lits et bancs carbonatés ou phosphatés, susceptibilité magnétique, etc.

   Historically, fossils were the principal criteria to define epochs, but this method isn't applicable for everything - and even when it is, it is from now on often correlated to other stratagraphic indicators: carbon and phosphorus beds, magnetic susceptibility, etc.

3. (oceanography) floor in ocean and sea

   L’étage infralittoral est situé en dessous des basses mers de vive-eau.

   The ocean bed close to the shore is under low seas at spring tide

4. (climatology) zone

   Dans les massifs montagneux des régions tempérées, l’étage subalpin est compris entre 1700-1900 m à 2300-2500 m d’altitude.

   In very mountainous temperate regions, the subalpine zone is included between 1700-1900 m to 2300-2500 m above sea level.

5. (astronautics) stage

   Un artificier allemand, Johann Schmidlap, inventa la fusée gigogne, un engin à multiples étages allumés séquentiellement et permettant de faire atteindre au feu d’artifice une plus grande altitude. C’est l’ancêtre des fusées à multiples étages utilisées aujourd’hui.

   A German artificier, Johann Schmidlap, invented the nesting rocket, an engine with multiple stages lit sequentially, allowing for a firework at a greater altitude. It's the ancestor of the rockets with multiple stages used today.

Usage notes

Standard French usage is to number floors in a building without counting the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée). The premier étage is thus the first floor above the ground floor, i.e. what is referred to in North America as the second floor, and so on. Usage is divided in Quebec, with some buildings following the North American English practice and others, especially modern and/or government buildings, following the general French practice. À l'étage means on the second storey of a two-storey building.

Derived terms

• bel étage
• de bas étage
• étagement
• étager
• étagère

Descendants

• → Czech: etáž
• → Bulgarian: етаж (etaž)
• → Danish: etage
• → Dutch: etage
• → Esperanto: etaĝo
• → German: Etage
• Norwegian:

  → Norwegian Bokmål: etasje

  → Norwegian Nynorsk: etasje

• → Romanian: etaj
• → Russian: этаж (etaž)

Verb

étage

1. inflection of étager:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “étage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• gâtée