If you're standing in solidarity with France following last Friday's horrifying Paris attacks, it can help to remember that solidarity, which means "unity for a common purpose," is itself a French word.
Coined in 1765 in a major Enlightenment text, The Encyclopedia, edited by Denis Diderot, the French solidarité meant "communion of interests and responsibilities, mutual responsibility," and it was derived from the French solidaire "interdependent, complete, entire," which came from from solide, meaning "solid." Solidarity showed up in English in 1829, following a long tradition of French-to-English language transfer that traces back to William the Conqueror and the 1066 Norman invasion of England.
The fact that English has been soaking up French for close to a thousand years explains how somewhere between 30 and 45 percent of English words can trace their origins to French. French words help us describe cooking, cars, diplomacy, literature, even words themselves, and we're still absorbing elements of the French language today. At times, the transfer is recent or rare enough these words still sound French — think laissez-faire, maladroit, metier, avoirdupois (a word you may not know that refers to something you use all the time). Other French imports, such as envelope, fantastic, joy, memory, fork, and bacon feel more homegrown.
Stand with France this week by learning a list we've compiled of 30 words that help us remember the linguistic debt we owe French-speaking peoples.
To make this a meaningful exercise for students, we've made sure to include academic vocabulary you're likely to see on the SAT, but we couldn't help starting the list with words that are the foundation of our national ethos as well as that of France, and are tinged with a new kind of importance in the wake of Friday's attacks: liberty, equality, and fraternity.