an unpleasant one for a coffin is a “boite a dominos” (a box of dominoes); a droll phrase for a plagiarist is “demarqueur de linge” (some one who alters the marking of another’s linen).  An interesting fact for the notice of physiologists is that when the officers of the engineer corps lose a comrade from insanity, they say, “Il s’est passe au dixieme,” in allusion to the fact that their loss in numbers from this cause amounts to practical decimation.  This is attributed to the close study of the exact sciences.  Under “femme du demi-monde” we find the origin of the phrase as created by A. Dumas fils:  “Femme nee dans un monde distingue, dont elle conserve les manieres sans en respecter les lois” ("a woman belonging by birth to the upper class, the manners of which she retains, without respecting its laws"); but the present meaning is quite different from this, the phrase being now used as a euphuistic designation of a disreputable woman.  French slang is saturated with irreverence.  A common term for an emaciated-looking man is to call him an “ecce homo,” and a “grippe Jesus” is thieves’ slang for a gendarme.

The author of this dictionary evidently sympathizes with modern romanticists and light literature in general, for we find “academicien” defined as “litterateur suranne.”  One is always inclined to suspect sour grapes of giving the flavor to French sarcasm concerning the Academy, and is reminded of Piron’s epigram in the shape of his own epitaph: 

    Ci git Piron qui ne fut rien,
    Pas meme academicien.

He wrote it, however, after his failure to obtain one of the much-coveted arm-chairs.

Our national vanity might be flattered by hearing that the phrase “L’oeil Americain” is used to describe an eye whose piercing vision is escaped by nothing, were we not told that it dates from the translation of Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales into French, and has no reference, as “Natty Bumpo” would say, to “white gifts.”

We find long, elaborate definitions of those much-disputed words, “chic,” “cachet” and “chien,” which, after all has been said, seem to take their meaning from the intention of those who use them and the perception of those who hear.  “Chocnoso” is a delightfully expressive and absurd onomatopeic word to describe what is brilliant, startling and remarkable.  The most striking feature of this elaborate book is that, although it contains almost words enough to constitute the vocabulary of a miniature language, yet the vast majority of these words would be as unintelligible to an educated Frenchman as to an Englishman.  The bulk of French slang is never heard by the ears of educated people nor uttered by their lips:  it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman’s eyes:  it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation.  If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest and absolute ignorance of the meaning of most of the words?  The answer to this question makes the moral of this paper.