SoCS –Vis à vis

Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

 

This post is part of Linda G Hill’s “Stream of Consciousness Saturday”  — Click and read, click and join in! Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “vis.”  Use a word, or tie your post’s theme around a word, that contains the letters VIS, in that order. Enjoy!

 

Vis-à-vis the sujet du jour,  I thought of “vis-à-vis, one of those curious phrases that we share with the French, no, I guess we really stole it from the French. It literally means “face to face,” but in English we commonly use it to mean, “in regards to.”  Like this: “He made some enquiries vis-à vis Elvis, and it seems that he had already left the building.”

In French, I think it has many more nuances and can be used in the literal sense as well, like this: “Ils étaient assis vis-à-vis.” (They sat face-to-face.) The French generally have many ways to use each of their words, making it (of course) more difficult to learn! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course 🙂

Interestingly, the opposite of “vis-à-vis” is “dos-à-dos,” which means “back-to-back.” You might think we don’t use this in English, but in fact, we kind of do. At least, sort of. Anybody remember being forced to learn square dancing in Junior High? Remember the “do-si-do”?  There you go! Derived from the French words, this dance move has you go “back-to-back” around your partner. Et voilà! 

I had some shopping and errands to do yesterday, and therefore I didn’t get my SoCS done on Saturday 😦  However, I thought the prompt was interesting so I hope it’s ok to be un peu un retard.  Alas, vis-à vis SoCS…it’s just a bit late. Désolée !