The French have taste in all they do,
Which we are quite without;
For Nature, which to them gave goût,1
To us gave only gout.
Repeated in: A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, By JMD Meiklejohn, published 1887.
I’ve been able to find this epigram on the web — it is usually attributed to Thomas Erskine (though one site gives “Erkshine” and others list it to “anonymous;” Meiklejohn merely notes it as “well-known”). The ironic thing to me is the fact that most copies of the epigram neglect the circumflex over the u (indicating it should be pronounced as a French word), so without the useful little footnote provided by Meiklejohn, a non-French speaker would wonder what was so funny about it.
I especially like the play on “French taste” and the underlying root of goût — which I wouldn’t have known without the footnote.
Hooray for annotation!
- Goût (goo) from Latin gustus, taste.[back]