Another Hattic tidbit from Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit Of Love (see this post):
“Poor Linda, she has an intensely romantic character, which is fatal for a woman. Fortunately for them, and for all of us, most women are madly terre à terre, otherwise the world could hardly carry on.”
I had no idea what the italicized phrase could possibly mean; fortunately, the OED has a helpful entry (from 1933):
1. Ballet. Applied to a step or manner of dancing in which the feet remain on or close to the ground.
French terre à terre ‘pas de danse qui s’exécute sans sauter’ Roquefort 1829.[1728 Terra, a terra,..is also apply’d to Dancers who cut no Capers, nor scarce quit the Ground. Hence it is also figuratively apply’d to Authors, whose Stile and Diction is low and creeping.
E. Chambers, Cyclopædia]1797 The grander sort of dancing, and terre à terre, is the best adapted to such dancers.
Encyclopædia Britannica vol. V. 668/1
[…]1961 He regrets that the Bolshoi ballet seemed to pay so little attention to terre à terre dancing.
Times 27 May 6/21983 During the next year, 1912, Lydia..danced an extremely difficult terre-à-terre ‘toe dance’.
M. Keynes, Lydia Lopokova 592. In extended use: without elevation of style; down-to-earth, realistic, matter-of-fact; pedestrian, unimaginative.
1888 His very matter-of-factness, his terre-à-terre fidelity to his authorities.
Athenæum 6 October 443/31898 It is so ‘true’, and yet just removed from that terre-à-terre fact which distinguishes so much portraiture.
Daily News 25 October 2/31907 Shutting out all wider metaphysical views and condemning us to the most terre-à-terre naturalism.
W. James, Pragmatism vii. 268
[…]1930 He was too frank not to admit that his friend and chief was, intellectually, very terre-à-terre.
Time & Tide 18 April 500/2
[…]1981 She..was ‘a credible girl who suffered from menstrual cramps’… You can’t get more terre à terre than that.
Listener 26 February 284/3
(We discussed the name Lopokova in 2016. The 1930 quote is by Carlo Sforza — you can see the context here, in the middle of p. 342 — and once again I deprecate the OED’s casual attitude towards authorship; furthermore, the book seems to have been first published in 1928.) I am torn between thinking this is a useful (and descriptive, if you know the ballet origin) phrase and thinking it’s impossibly recherché and would make a reader think you were a priggish show-off for using it; is anyone familiar with it?
I’m no balletomane, and didn’t know the origin, but I thought it was pretty obvious what it meant (true observation, as well.)
Isn’t the somewhat precious air of the phrase simply in character? Lots of the characters (and the narrator) talk like that (though not Uncle Matthew, so much.)
new to me, too, but i agree with DE that it’s a good piece of characterization. i wonder how much of the figurative meaning is bleed-over from “down to earth”?
Isn’t the somewhat precious air of the phrase simply in character? Lots of the characters (and the narrator) talk like that
Sure, I was just wondering if anyone still knew/used the phrase in this brave new century.
I assume that the Athenæum 1888 and Listener 1981 cites have authors as well, but I don’t know if those journals provided names. You can actually see the latter cite in context here, but there’s not enough context to see who wrote the piece.
There are plenty of references to terre-à-terre, from as early as 1771, as a particular trained horse’s gait, explained as a two-time gallop: the front hooves hit the ground together, then the rear ones, etc. That is oddly missing from the OED. All three meanings (horses, dancers, down to earth) are attested in French since at least 1690.
It’s also the name of a famous fancy vegetarian restaurant in Brighton.
a famous fancy vegetarian restaurant in Brighton
For people or for horses?
Hey!
While this obviously wasn’t the question, the expression is very familiar to me in Romance languages, with the curious exception of Spanish.
It may be of tangential interest that the usage I’m very familiar with does not extend to an approving description of someone as being down to earth.
When referring to people, I’m pretty sure the pejorative meaning in the Sforza quote is the only one possible in Italian. The Battaglia dictionary confirms this understanding.
In French, I cannot confidently rule out that one might call someone terre à terre to praise their avoidance of flights of fancy, but I definitely wouldn’t dare and try. The TLFi isn’t encouraging.
For Catalan, dictionaries list only the literal meaning:
However, the Diccionari de sinònims de frases fetes offers as synonyms “prosaic, mancat d’un to elevat” and “vulgar” (both of a style), which again sound pejorative to me.
My knowledge of Portuguese is passive only. I also haven’t located a particularly scholarly dictionary of Portuguese. The perfectly serviceable Dicionário Infopédia does list positive as well as pejorative meanings, but provides no guidance as to usage.
Thanks very much for all that! I agree that it seems generally pejorative, even in English.
with the curious exception of Spanish.
RAE has this:
Completely different senses!
@hat
Maybe compare tête-à-tête and “head to head”.
@lh: I think “con cautela y sin arrojo” isn’t too far from “modestamente, mediocremente, umilmente” or “qui manque d’élévation, de hauteur de vues”
That said, I’m still to find an actual attestation of the Spanish phrase in this sense
@Y: The equestrian meaning is in the OED as a calque from Italian rather than French.
Curiously, their earliest citation is in French, from Cotgrave’s (1611) Dictionarie of French & English Tongues, but they discount it as foreign (in grey and within square brackets) and start with the Italian as used within an English sentence in 1614.
the OED has a helpful entry (from 1933)
Pedantic note: it’s from 1986. (It must be a bad page design if it misleads even Languagehat.) Burchfield didn’t just tack on more quotations to the entries from 1933, he completely revised them, with new definitions, sometimes new early quotations, and when necessary, corrected etymologies, e.g. at benne.
“Terre à terre” is alive and kicking in spoken French (on this shore of the Atlantic certainly), and in answer to Giacomo Ponzetto’s comment/question (“In French, I cannot confidently rule out that one might call someone terre à terre to praise their avoidance of flights of fancy, but I definitely wouldn’t dare and try”): Not only can one definitely use “terre à terre” in a non-pejorative sense, but to my ears a non-pejorative meaning is the dominant/normal one and a pejorative meaning a marked/unusual one.
I admit I would be curious to learn more about the history of the expression, especially one that would explain the (odd) exclusion of Spanish.
Cape Breton step dancing (and perhaps other related forms I’m less familiar with) has a similar concept of “close to the floor”, which refers to the economy of movement needed to achieve the control, fluidity and rhythmic precision that are the hallmarks of a good dancer. When used either literally or metaphorically it’s unreservedly positive.