étui
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Noun
étui (plural étuis)
- A small, ornamental bag or rigid container used for holding articles such as needles.
- 1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover 1964, p. 26 n.:
- Secondly, glass bottles are useless: the drugs should be stowed away in tin or wooden boxes, such as the natives of the country use, and when a phial is required, it must be fitted into an étui of some kind.
- 1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill 1972, p. 13:
- And what about that comb in a real-leather etui, what about, what about it – oh, it would get fouled up in no time and it would take an hour of work to remove the grime from between its tight teeth [...].
- 1995, Thomas Mann, translated from the 1925 German by John E. Woods, "The Magic Mountain", Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 46:
- And from a buff leather etui monogrammed in silver, he extracted one of his Maria Mancinis-- a lovely specimen from the top of the box, flattened on just one side the way he especially liked it [...].
- 1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover 1964, p. 26 n.:
Anagrams
French
Etymology
From Middle French étui, from Old French estui (“case, sheath”), of uncertain origin.
Possibly a derivative of Old French estuier (“keep, hold”), itself possibly from Vulgar Latin *studiāre, from Latin studium; or, more likely, of (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Lua error in Module:parameters at line 331: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "gem" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. origin, related to Middle High German stūche (“cupping glass”). Compare Occitan estug, Catalan estoig, Spanish estuche.
Pronunciation
Noun
étui m (plural étuis)
- case (for glasses, cigars, a viola)
- holster (for a gun)
- cover (for an umbrella)
- cartridge (of a bullet)
Descendants
Further reading
- “étui”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
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