vouvoyer

present singular third person vouvoyers · participle present vouvoyering · participle past vouvoyered · past vouvoyered

1. alternativeAlternative form of vousvoyer.

   The lad is vouvoyering him, being well brought up: the state he’s in, he has hardly earned the formal mode.

   2016, Jo Baker, A Country Road, A Tree, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 181

   4 more examples

   [Guy] Bertrand said he should also have twigged when “Bouchard” – whom he has addressed using the familiar “tu” for years – started off the conversation using the formal “vous.” “I found myself saying, ‘Hello, Lucien, how is it going?’ and he ‘vouvoyered’ me and he had a bit of a haughty air. So I told myself that even though we know each other well, perhaps it’s better if we use vous.”

   1996 May 17, Elizabeth Thompson, “Bertrand found fake ‘Bouchard’ a bit haughty”, in The Gazette, page A 2

   An outraged Parisian gave up skiing when his instructor addressed him as tu, while a fashionable personal trainer insists upon it because he would not feel right about vouvoyer-ing deltoids and abs.[…]Questioned on his use of tu and vous, a Paris doctor said he doesn't know why he addresses his daughter-in-law as vous and his son-in-law as tu or why he tutoyers his golf pro but vouvoyers his golf partners.

   2000 February 19, Mary Blume, “Mastering the Unmasterable: A French Puzzle”, in The New York Times

   I had followed up the few leads I had and was invited to a couple of dinner parties, but after years of over-busy social life in London, I had become an awkward mute, knowing I was failing to understand the codes, the tutoyer-ing versus the vouvoyer-ing.

   2012 January 7, Joanna Briscoe, “Alone in Paris”, in The Independent, number 7872, page 46

   In my view, vouvoyering is not enough. Far better to go on to monsieur et madame, which applies another diaphanous layer of style.

   2020 January 29, Norman Hunt, “Madame XXX”, in The Connexion