Appropriately enough, it seems to be a word that is working in foreign territory.Įspionage shares roots with spy, but retains its superficial Frenchness because it was borrowed centuries later, in the late 1700s earlier borrowings into English are often changed and anglicized more than relatively recent ones.

It is pronounced in the French manner, rhyming with garage (for American English speakers), with that soft g sound that is distinctively French. It seems fitting that the word spy is an English-looking monosyllable borrowed from French that ultimately comes from Germanic roots.Įspionage wears an indisputably French origin on its sleeve. The French word was attested in the 11th century, and had come to Middle English by the 13th century.Ī word’s etymology is its biography sometimes it reveals a disguise. Spy, it turns out, comes from the French verb espier (“to spy”), itself from the Franconian spehôn, meaning “to observe attentively.” Franconian, known in French as francique, was a German dialect from a region that today includes Bavaria, known as Franconia. This whole story of the writer’s name has an uncanny resonance with the word spy itself, which, while it has a chunky Anglo-Saxon monosyllabic quality, actually comes to English from French.īut, perhaps unsurprisingly, hiding behind the French word’s identity is a slightly unusual Germanic background-unusual for a language that directly descended from Latin, the language of origin for most French words.

He was advised by his publisher to choose a name with “two Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, like Chunk-Smith” as a false name, but chose instead the oddly French “le Carré.” Carré means “square” or “squared” in French, and is indeed sometimes a family name, but used with le seems a bit strange, coming across as “John the Square.” “John le Carré” was the pseudonym of writer David Cornwell, who was working as a member of Her Majesty’s secret service when his first novels were published, requiring that he disguise his identity.

Scalphunters john le carre