étui

See also: etui and Etui

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French étui.

Noun

étui (plural étuis)

1. A small, ornamental bag or rigid container used for holding articles such as needles.
   • 1791 June 1, John Ireland, “The Harlot’s Progress. Plate I.”, in Hogarth Illustrated, volume I, [London]: J[ohn] & J[osiah] Boydell […], →OCLC, pages 4–5:

     From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her home-spun garb, and dressed in the gayest style of the day; her pincushion and scissars discarded for an etwee and watch, and the tender native hue of her complexion incrusted with paint, and disguised by patches.

   • 1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover, published 1964, p. 26 n:

     Secondly, glass bottles are useless: the drugs should be stowed away in tin or wooden boxes, such as the natives of the country use, and when a phial is required, it must be fitted into an étui of some kind.

   • 1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill, published 1972, page 13:

     And what about that comb in a real-leather etui, what about, what about it – oh, it would get fouled up in no time and it would take an hour of work to remove the grime from between its tight teeth [...].

   • 1995, Thomas Mann, translated from the 1925 German by John E. Woods, "The Magic Mountain", Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 46:

     And from a buff leather etui monogrammed in silver, he extracted one of his Maria Mancinis-- a lovely specimen from the top of the box, flattened on just one side the way he especially liked it [...].

Alternative forms

• etwee (obsolete)
• etui

Anagrams

• Tieu

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French étui, from Old French estui (“case, sheath”), of uncertain origin.

Possibly a derivative of Old French estuier (“keep, hold”), itself possibly from Vulgar Latin *studiāre, from Latin studium; or, more likely, of Germanic origin, related to Middle High German stūche (“cupping glass”). Compare Occitan estug, Catalan estoig, Spanish estuche, Portuguese estojo.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /e.tɥi/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophone: étuis

Noun

étui m (plural étuis)

1. case (for glasses, cigars, soap, a viola)
2. holster (for a gun)
3. cover (for an umbrella)
4. cartridge (of a bullet)

Descendants

• → Dutch: etui
• → English: étui
• → Esperanto: -ujo
• → Galician: estui
• → German: Etui
• → Ido: etuyo
• → Polish: etui
• → Romanian: etui
• → Swedish: etui

Further reading

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