Is there any word ,in English, for mixed feelings ? Suppose , just for the sake of example , someone is bold enough to bet $2,000 equivalent on Bush winning the election, he really wants Kerry to win, but Bush triumphs? What is the word for the mixed feelings that result?
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10-25-04, 01:09 PM
methos
Ambivalence (ambi=both, valence=strength), perhaps?

10-25-04, 03:27 PM
DorianGreyed
bittersweet
noun
something that is bittersweet; especially : pleasure alloyed with pain

adjective
being at once bitter and sweet; especially : pleasant but including or marked by elements of suffering or regret

10-25-04, 03:33 PM
FredPuli
DG and Methos, thanks.

Bittersweet is more what I was after, I think. 'Sweet and sour',of course, ( I'll be reduced to eating Chinese takeaways if Kerry wins Big Grin )

10-25-04, 09:07 PM
mozart56
Just in case you'd be wondering,Fred, in your area it would be sentiment "doux-amer" feminine=> "douce-amère".

10-26-04, 01:05 AM
FredPuli
Thanks Mozart: I have been using 'aigre-doux' for this feeling.

Perhaps I didn't hear it but got it off a Vietnamese / Chinese menu down here ! All that sweet and sour...

As usual the French have a term for it. Then the French do have words for feelings and for subtlety of observation which we lack. It's why we have no word for naive . Of a woman 'jolie-laide' , not to be translated 'pretty ugly'(as I've seen done ! ), is another. How do we translate that ? 'She is strangely beautiful' is not it. She is 'pretty but in a plain kind of way' ? We know what is meant.

There seem to be lots of others, too.

( Do the French have a word for nuance? )

10-26-04, 01:27 AM
puppyblues
I think I like DG's word, bittersweet. It's simple, everyone knows what you mean and you don't have to pick up the dictionary to understand it Big Grin

Fredpuli...don't eat the Chinese food, Clare puts kitties in it!! Eek Red Face

10-26-04, 07:53 AM
mozart56
[Of a woman 'jolie-laide' , not to be translated 'pretty ugly'(as I've seen done ! ), is another. How do we translate that ? 'She is strangely beautiful' is not it. She is 'pretty but in a plain kind of way' ? We know what is meant].-Fred

In this case "pretty" means "rather or quite" and is an adverb.You would use the word "assez" for it.

Did you know that the word "nuance" comes from "nue" Smileof course the French know a lot about it. Big Grin

10-27-04, 05:42 PM
FredPuli
Nuance from nue ? You mean 'naked (and female)', Mozart? Big Grin If only! Methinks it's from nue , the old, rather poetic or literary, word for clouds; les nues is 'the skies'. So 'mettre les filles aux nues', to my teenage disappointment, did not mean 'to put out naked girls' but simply 'to over compliment girls, to praise girls to the skies '.

The French certainly know a lot about the naked female though; if they don't they've only got to watch their TV of an evening. Clouds? More a British thing; though the rainfall in Paris and Nice is greater than in London or Newmarket, the French clouds are nowhere near as interesting (because they really only have one kind of rain }

So a nuance is like a cloud; it is something discernible but difficult to delineate or define, which a naked female certainly isn't (though both, of course, may be difficult to embrace Smile)

[Now was that maikuesque enough ? ]

10-27-04, 10:43 PM
mozart56
What better place to create a word but by looking at the sky? The clouds, the rainbows and all it's shades,the blue sky that sometimes is turquoise,"les nues" became "nuances".

Ask a painter what
"nuance" is, or a musician. Smileor a linguist.

Nuance has always existed! Smile the term was coined by the French.

10-27-04, 11:29 PM
mozart56
( tried to edit but it didn't work),

Both language have their ambiguity,funny correlations,like the coincidence that "je peints des nues " the word "nues" means something different from "nue" => sky.

But it allows to make funny jokes that cannot be translated ,but can be delightfully understood, if you speak two languages or more.( I guess we're getting away from the main subject....Maikuesque?)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,