Yet another great word from Douchet’s Nouvelle Vague (see this post)! In a passage on Jacques Rivette, he writes: “Dire de Rivette que l’Histoire des Treize de Balzac est son livre de chevet, et l’idée du complot la base et de sa vie et de son cinéma, relève de la lapalissade.” [To say of Rivette that Balzac’s The History of the Thirteen is his bedside book, and that the idea of conspiracy is the basis of both his life and his cinema, is a matter of lapalissade.] The last word was unknown to me, so I checked Wiktionary: “An obvious, self-evident truth, especially humorously so; a tautology or truism.” The etymology is sheer delight:
From the name of Jacques de la Palice (a French nobleman and military officer, died in the Battle of Pavia, 1525) + -ade. His epitaph reads ci gît Monſieur de la Palice: s’il n’était pas mort, il ferait encore envie (“here lies the lord of La Palice: if he weren’t dead, he would still be envied”). However, due to the similarity between the letters ⟨f⟩ and ⟨ſ⟩ (long s), it was misread (accidentally or intentionally) as the truism s’il n’était pas mort, il serait encore en vie (“if he weren’t dead, he would still be alive”).
Poor guy! But at least his memory lives on…
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