Grab your foil. Slip on your mask. Time to see how the French sport of fencing is such a fount of English. The sword alone has a strong section, or FORTE , from Latin fortis (strong), as well as weaker part, or FOIBLE, based on faible, the French for feeble. Of course, these words now readily apply to the strengths and flaws of our own character.
A classic battle offers REPARTEE . No clever talk, which the word has come to mean, but skilled counter-thrust. The source is répartie, or answering blow. A close cousin is RIPOSTE, a quick reply in battle or conversation, arising from archaic French for response.
Top-level fencers display ÉLAN—the French word for zest. Pronounced ay-LARN, the quality stems from élancer (to throw forward), harking back further to the Latin word lancea, our source of the weapon, LANCE.
Finally, after so much poise and parry, we reach the crucial TOUCHÉ. This is the cry that recognises an opponent’s strike on your body. It’s pure French for ‘touched’, and nowadays signals a well-timed word, not sword.
1. Gladius is Latin for sword, the origin of GLADIATOR and GLADIOLUS, also known as the sword lily. Hence the scientific name for swordfish is Xiphias gladius. Are you sharp enough to pin the creatures on the left to the correct zoological alias on the right?
| beaver | Ailuropoda melanoleuca |
| elk | Aquila audax |
| funnel-web spider | Atrax robustus |
| guinea pig | Cavia porcellus |
| panda | Castor fiber |
| red roo | Cervus canadensis |
| seahorse | Hippocampus erectus |
| sugar glider | Petaurus breviceps |
| wedge-tailed eagle | Macropus rufus |
2. If GLAD is extracted from Gladiator, from which notable single-word movie titles have the following words been sliced?
(a) former ____________________
(b) perm ____________________
(c) liver ____________________
(d) rains ____________________
(e) NATO ____________________
(f) scarf ____________________
(g) made ____________________
(h) pill ____________________