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prettygoodwordmanqué or manque (mahng-KEY) - adj., having failed to become what one might have been, would-be, unfulfilled.
Especially because of circumstances or a defect of character. Almost always used post-positively, after the noun, and when used of a woman often spelled with the French form manquée -- and even, often, still italicized as a foreign word. It's been used since the 1770s, though, and often enough is fully nativized as manque, so that's good enough for me. In French, it's the past participle of manquer to lack/be short of, from Italian mancare, from manco, lacking/defective, from Medieval Latin mancus, same meaning, from Latin mancus meaning feeble, lit. maimed/having a useless hand, probably derivative of manus, hand. I think, of all the usage examples I've seen looking this up, the harshest was starlet manqué, but there's also that poet manqué staring at me.
---L.
Especially because of circumstances or a defect of character. Almost always used post-positively, after the noun, and when used of a woman often spelled with the French form manquée -- and even, often, still italicized as a foreign word. It's been used since the 1770s, though, and often enough is fully nativized as manque, so that's good enough for me. In French, it's the past participle of manquer to lack/be short of, from Italian mancare, from manco, lacking/defective, from Medieval Latin mancus, same meaning, from Latin mancus meaning feeble, lit. maimed/having a useless hand, probably derivative of manus, hand. I think, of all the usage examples I've seen looking this up, the harshest was starlet manqué, but there's also that poet manqué staring at me.
---L.
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Date: 2015-11-16 11:03 pm (UTC)