façon de parler

English

Alternative forms

• façon-de-parler (in attributive use)

Etymology

From French façon de parler (“way of speaking”, “manner of speech”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: făsôɴ də păʀlé, IPA^(key): /fasɔ̃ də paʁle/

Noun

façon de parler (plural façons de parler)

1. A turn of phrase or rhetorical formula, especially one that ought not be taken literally, but rather as employed for convenience of expression only.
   • 1999: Simon Blackburn, Think: A compelling introduction to philosophy, chapter 7: The World, section 6: Kant’s Revolution, pages 258–259 (Oxford University Press, paperback, →ISBN

     This might all seem grist to Berkeley’s mill. Berkeley himself knew that we interpret our experience in spatio-temporal, objective terms. But he thought we had to ‘speak with the vulgar but think with the learned’: in other words, learn to regard that interpretation as a kind of façon de parler, rather than the description of a real, independent, objective world.

References

• “‖façon de parler” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]

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French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fa.sɔ̃ d(ə) paʁ.le/

Noun

façon de parler f (plural façons de parler)

1. façon de parler

   Désolé si je t'ai vexé, c'était une façon de parler.

   Sorry for having annoyed you, it was a façon de parler.