{"id":1765,"date":"2011-02-14T10:17:47","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T15:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattangre.com\/blog\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:52:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:52:29","slug":"origin-stories-gauche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/origin-stories-gauche\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin Stories: Gauche"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.<\/em><\/p>\n

In English, gauche<\/a> means “tactless, lacking social grace, awkward, crude.”<\/p>\n

That’s kind of weird, because, in French, gauche<\/i> just means “left.” As in, “Please turn gauche<\/i> here, Monsieur Taxi Driver.” (Okay, please don’t ever actually say that to a French taxi driver).<\/p>\n

It is terribly gauche<\/em> to put ketchup on your steak and then talk with your mouth full as you eat it. That’s the last time I ever bring you to a nice place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, nearly all cultures are biased against left-handed people. Similarly, the word sinister<\/a> comes from the Latin word for left. The French word for right gives us the English word adroit<\/a>, which means skilled.\u009d<\/p>\n

If you are offended by this slight against left-handed people, here are some words you could use in various situations instead of gauche<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Boorish<\/a> (rude, ill-mannered, insensitive)
\nMeretricious<\/a> (attractive in a vulgar way, specious)
\nUncouth<\/a> (having bad manners, awkward)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-verbal","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7284,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/7284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}