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Richard Walker

Word of the Day: Chapeau

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French for 'hat' of course but looking it up, I found it was borrowed into English in the early 16c, with the same meaning. But recently it's become an interjection.

I was reading the reader comments on an article in The Times and came across a comment warmly agreeing with one by someone else. And at the end of their own comment the author wrote

Chapeau!

I had never ever seen this before, but the meaning was immediately clear. They were tipping or doffing their hat to the other person as a mark of respect and approbation. 'Well done, hats off to you' sort of thing.

So I looked it up in the OED and on Wiktionary, and this use of 'Chapeau' is first recorded from the late 1960s and now it's  recognised as an interjection having more or less the same meaning as 'Bravo!'.

But it's actually a second borrowing from French! In French you can say, Chapeau bas!, 'Hats off!' Or just Chapeau! for short.

To end up, here is a rather good example

Ed, you're awesome! Chapeau mate [three ‘clapping hands’ emojis]

(@CB_cycles on twitter, 21 March 2019, cited in Oxford English Dictionary)

So that's how you cite an emoji, I never knew ['face with wide open eyes' emoji]

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