rossignol
Appearance
See also: Rossignol
French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Old Occitan rossinhol (cf. Catalan rossinyol), from Vulgar Latin *lusciniolus, masculine diminutive of Latin luscinia (“nightingale”). According to de Vaan, "might be explained with haplology from *lusci-cania (“'singing in the night', 'blind singer'”)", but this is conjecture.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]rossignol m (plural rossignols)
- nightingale
- chanter comme un rossignol ― (please add an English translation of this usage example)
- picklock, skeleton key
- Synonym: passe-partout
- (colloquial) piece of junk
- 1883, Émile Zola, chapter 2, in Au Bonheur des Dames:
- Ce dernier, ayant remarqué que les marchandises démodées, les rossignols, s’enlevaient d’autant plus rapidement que la guelte donnée aux commis était plus forte, avait basé sur cette observation un nouveau commerce.
- He, having noticed that the outdated merchandise, the junk, shifted more quickly the higher the commission that the shop assistants were given, had based a new business on this observation.
Derived terms
[edit]- rossignole (“female nightingale”)
- rossignoler (“to sing like a nightingale”)
- rossignolet (“young nightingale”)
Further reading
[edit]- “rossignol”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Categories:
- French terms derived from Old Occitan
- French terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- French terms derived from Latin
- French 3-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- French terms with collocations
- French colloquialisms
- French terms with quotations
- fr:Thrushes