500 Foreign Words & Phrases You Should Know to Sound Smart: Terms to Demonstrate Your Savoir Faire, Chutzpah, and Bravado

by Peter Archer

Dazzle with your command of belle-lettres!

Like a true sophisticate, you'd like to toss out casual bon mots to enliven your conversation. You'd like to float through cocktail parties offering your guests crudités and hors d'oeuvres, toasting to the prevailing Weltgeist and speculating on who's having an affaire de coeur.

But first you need to know what those words mean.

Here's a guide to declaiming like an intellectual in a foreign language. More than 500 of the most commonly used foreign words and phrases that enhance our language and make us sound sophisticated have been translated into English, along with a pronunciation guide and a sample sentence showing you how to use them. In addition, you'll find quotations in other languages, which will impress everyone with your erudition and experiencia del mundo. All this together with a plethora of minutae, spicing the entries with an exquisite mélange of information that heightens their je ne sais quoi.

So get busy dotting your conversation with these words and phrases. Remember, Experientia docet.

Genres: Nonfiction, Linguistics

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2012

Reviews

[Randell Carlton Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This helpful book should be on everyone’s shelf. Extremely informative, and will generously augment your writing habits, especially when searching for the mot juste. 📖📚📖

[Bloodorange · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 stars, rounded up. Pretentious, but useful; I caught one or two errors, so watch out - but overall, it's a clever little resource for lang&lit teachers.

[Christel Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun!

[Katharina · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Betonung as a german would say is; "to SOUND smart" because it is not enough to give one meaning off a word or phrase. Or just link them to Hitler and say only a german philosoph can understand it. At least not if you are writing an earnest book with which your reader won't blamage himself.
So my fazit, for Latin it is good and for french ok, but for german or Yiddish it is a witz and not necessarily a friendly one.