🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 07 Jun 2000 21:39:27 GMT, dmcg6174@yahoo.com (daniel mcgrath)
wrote, in part:

>What are your comments on "sans" meaning "without", from the French,
>as an English word?

Query: what does your question mean?

Certainly, within a French-language sentence, the word "sans"
generally conveys the same meaning as the word "without" in an
English-language sentence.

The French noun "montre" can be used to mean to watch something...or
it can mean the timekeeping device one wears on one's wrist!

Some words don't have exact correspondence between languages: the
Japanese word, usually translated as the verb "drink", can also mean
to gulp solid food down without chewing...or to consume something by
inhaling, such as cigarette smoke. "Sans" does not seem to be,
however, one of the examples that illustrates this.

If you're suggesting modifying the English language, perhaps to save
three letters, I don't think anyone is very interested. However,
Shakespeare once used "sans" to mean "without" in an English sentence,
when he described the state of life in old age. And "sans" is
descended from the Latin word "sine". Thus, a _sine qua non_ is that
of which it can be said "without which, nothing".

John Savard (teneerf <-)
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/