Manqué

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Manqué (feminine, manquée) is a French word - the past participle of the verb manquer, to miss - which is applied as an adjective in English to someone who might have become something but did not. It is placed after a noun (as in French) and is used in particular of professions: for example, a civil servant with a highly pronounced political sense or inclination (and who thus might have made a good politician) might be described as a "politician manqué".

The Collins Dictionary gave the example of a manager as an "actor manqué" [1], while the Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases cited the Times magazine in 1996 as describing a "subway genius" as "a writer manqué since many of his chosen citations deal with creating literature" [2]. Arising from the inscription on Plato's door in Ancient Greece, "let no one devoid of geometry enter here" [3], the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes has been described as typifying a "mathematician manqué".

[edit] Manqué as failure

In French manqué is sometimes applied to someone who has failed to gain professional status - such as un médicin manqué (a failed doctor) [4] - whereas, in English, it need not have that perjorative implication. In the game of roulette the set of numbers from 1 to 18 is described as manque (no accent), meaning that the ball has "failed" to land in one of the higher (18-36) slots.

[edit] Manky

The slang manky, meaning "inferior" or "dirty", is thought to be linked in some way to manqué, possibly from the old Scottish word mank (maimed or defective) [5], but maybe via Polari [6], the camp slang that came to the attention of a wider public in the 1960s through the radio show Round the Horne [7]. The ancestor of all these words is the Latin mancus (maimed or crippled; and, by tranference, imperfect or incomplete [8]).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Collins Softback English Dictionary (3rd ed, 1991). See also Pocket Oxford Dictionary (8th edition, 1992)
  2. ^ Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases (ed Jennifer Speake, 1997)
  3. ^ Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (4th ed 1992) 21:16
  4. ^ Harrap's School Dictionary & French Grammar (ed Michael James, 1991)
  5. ^ John Ayto (1991) Making Sense of Foreign Words in English
  6. ^ Ayto, op. cit.
  7. ^ See, for example, Barry Johnston (2006) Round Mr Horne
  8. ^ Cassell's New Latin-English English-Latin Dictionary (D. P. Simpson, 3rd ed 1964)