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prettygoodwordtranche - n., a portion of a whole or of a pool.
Of recent note for its use in collateralized debt obligations, where a large number of, say, mortgages, some safe and some risky, were pooled and then shares of which (called tranches) sold off as investments, so that each tranche had a partial ownership of several mortgages. The theory was that this spread the risky bets down, thus diluting the risk. Instead, everyone who bought them was tarred with the risk. I'll let Wikipedia take it from there. From French, literally meaning slice, from Old French, from trenchier or trancher. You sometimes see critics of the more pretentious sort calling "slice of life" stories "tranche de vie".
---L.
Of recent note for its use in collateralized debt obligations, where a large number of, say, mortgages, some safe and some risky, were pooled and then shares of which (called tranches) sold off as investments, so that each tranche had a partial ownership of several mortgages. The theory was that this spread the risky bets down, thus diluting the risk. Instead, everyone who bought them was tarred with the risk. I'll let Wikipedia take it from there. From French, literally meaning slice, from Old French, from trenchier or trancher. You sometimes see critics of the more pretentious sort calling "slice of life" stories "tranche de vie".
---L.
