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découseur

Posted: Tue 23 Feb 2016 19:05
by martyn94
I had occasion to find out what the French for a "seam ripper" is. It's my title: everything you could want: elegant, non-violent, intelligible - and not something I would ever have guessed in a month of Sundays.

Posted: Wed 24 Feb 2016 16:17
by Sus
ok, so now I am intrigued on how you found this out!?!

Posted: Wed 24 Feb 2016 19:45
by lonesome paddy
He was looking for a needle in a haystack

Re: découseur

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 04:20
by Allan
martyn94 wrote:I had occasion to find out what the French for a "seam ripper" is. It's my title: everything you could want: elegant, non-violent, intelligible - and not something I would ever have guessed in a month of Sundays.
And coming apart at the seams.....? 😀

A couseuse is a seamstress so the word extraction is fairly logical

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 09:16
by Kate
Sew what?

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 09:21
by Sue
Oooh this had me in stitches!

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 12:35
by martyn94
Sus wrote:ok, so now I am intrigued on how you found this out!?!
I followed my usual strategy for abstruse products. First I looked in my Larousse and got nowhere. Then I put a search for "seam ripper" into Amazon.fr. You get lots of results only in English, but if you persevere you find someone who describes it as, eg "seam ripper/découseur". Then you put "découseur" into Amazon.fr and get many more results. The same thing works on eBay.fr.

It's the wonderfully logical (and hence Cartesian, and hence French) idea of an "un-sower" that appealed to me. Us Anglos go for the more concrete idea of "ripping".

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 12:40
by Sue
un-sewer to be precise or you taking seeds out the ground. Sorry but I could't resist. :lol: :lol:

Posted: Thu 25 Feb 2016 15:54
by martyn94
Sue wrote:un-sewer to be precise or you taking seeds out the ground. Sorry but I could't resist. :lol: :lol:
You can tell that I'm not much of a seamster, though I can do buttons. Strange that seamster is the masculine, or non-gendered, form of the word though "brewster" is a female brewer and "spinster" a female spinner. I can't even blame it on the spell check this time.

Posted: Fri 26 Feb 2016 07:55
by sue and paul
are you sure it wasn't "bodice ripper" you were searching for? See if you can find the French for that :lol:

Posted: Fri 26 Feb 2016 09:30
by martyn94
sue and paul wrote:are you sure it wasn't "bodice ripper" you were searching for? See if you can find the French for that :lol:
Larousse reckons it's a "roman grivois à trame historique". But it does not really capture the charm of the original.

Posted: Tue 15 Nov 2016 22:01
by catllar
Also known as a decoud-vite! Excuse the spelling if it's wrong - never seen it written down only heard it used verbally!

Posted: Wed 16 Nov 2016 01:04
by Robert Ferrieux
If it was produced in Bradford, a fabrics town, would it be called a "Yorkshire ripper"? (Aaaaarrrghh - forget it)

Posted: Wed 16 Nov 2016 15:06
by martyn94
Robert Ferrieux wrote:If it was produced in Bradford, a fabrics town, would it be called a "Yorkshire ripper"? (Aaaaarrrghh - forget it)
Only if the guy who arrested him was a Yorkshire peeler. But that's enough unfunny bad-taste jokes.