Bonjour, mes amis, and bienvenue to today’s ‘versement’ of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. I can assure you that today’s word is something I am familiar with, and that you may be familiar with too, for today’s word is: chantepleurer.

Chantepleurer is a French word meaning ‘singing and crying at the same time’. Aha! I suspected you might be familiar with this scenario, earnest listener, for I always knew you were a tender soul. It is also referred to as ‘alternate singing and weeping’ or ‘the alternation of joy and grief’. In architecture, chantepleurer is a narrow vertical hole or slit in a wall, to let the overflow of a stream or any other water that may collect pass through. Interesting, but let us stick with the first definition, for now.

Simply stated, ‘chante’ means ‘sung’ and ‘pleurer’ means ‘cry’, and so you have ‘sung-cry’. ‘Chante’ comes from the Middle French ‘chanter’, from the Latin ‘cantāre’, which means ‘to sing’. ‘Pleurer’ comes from the Old French ‘plorer’, from the Latin ‘plōrāre’, meaning ‘I cry out’. It’s quite poetic, really.

The French word ‘chantre’ as a noun, has several different meanings. The archaic meaning is a singer or a songster, whilst the religious meaning is ‘cantor’. There is also a literary meaning: ‘bard or minstrel’ and a figurative meaning: ‘figurehead, champion or advocate’. 

The French word ‘pluerer’ can also mean ‘to mourn’, and is from the Latin ‘plōrō’ meaning ‘to cry out’ or ‘lament or complain’. Fascinatingly, the similar French word ‘pluie’ means rain, and comes from the Latin word ‘pluvia’ also meaning ‘rain’ or ‘a shower of something’. Could it be tears, dear listener, that are showering down amongst your resonant notes? Is that you chantepluerering in the shower? It thought as much.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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