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Word Tips: Engaged Men and Women

By VJ
"Oh! My fiancée is so cute!" shouted the woman.

Now, if you know correct English and you read this sentence, you will think that the woman is a lesbian. There's no possible explanation for having a fiancée, who is a betrothed woman.

The word for an engaged man is fiancé, without that 'e' at the end. So the first sentence should be, "Oh! My fiancé is so cute!"

Fiancé: Betrothed man
Fiancée: Betrothed woman

Both these words are pronounced, 'fee on say'. The plural forms are simply 'fiancés' and 'fiancées'.

Don't forget the acute diacritic sign above the letter, 'e'.

Etymology

These words originate from the French verb, 'fiancer', which means 'to become engaged'. So, you see, both these words originate from the French language, in which they are still strongly in use.
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Comments

  1. RavynApril 4, 2009 at 5:51 PM

    ...and while we're at it, "Shouted" shouldn't be capitalized in correct English. Speech tags after quotes don't capitalize, no matter what the ending punctuation of the sentence is; it has to be an entirely new sentence to rate a capital letter.

    Thanks for bringing focus on this word issue, though; there are far too many people who ignore the little details like this. And thanks for the etymology.

    ReplyDelete
  2. VJApril 4, 2009 at 8:28 PM

    @Ravyn: Oh yes, you are right. I edited it just now. See.

    ReplyDelete

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