empiler
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Bowls or "bols" from Pornic (a village in the Loire-Atlantique, north-western France).
empiler (om-pee-lay) verb
: to pile (up), to stack (up); to do
.
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Quote / Example sentence:
L'argent est plat pour être empilé.
Money is flat for stacking.
Hear the French word empiler and the above quote:
Download empiler.mp3 . Download empiler.wav
Expressions:
se faire empiler = to be had
s'empiler dans = to squeeze into (car, elevator)
More on today's word...
"Empiler" was the first word that came to mind when thinking about the French equivalent of "stack" (as in "to stack cups"). Only, while flipping through the dictionary, I noticed that "entasser" is listed as a synonym.
Entasser... yes, that makes more sense, I thought, noticing how "tasse" (cup) finds its way into the word. "Entasser" would seem to be the right verb for stacking cups (or bowls, as in today's picture), and everybody knows the French use bowls as cups: think café-au-lait)....
Turns out the "tasse" in "entasser" is really the word "un tas" (heap, pile) and not "une tasse" (cup). It looks like "empiler" is most often used for dishes, and "entasser" when you want to heap something onto something --such as dirty clothes onto a mound of laundry... which reminds me of that nagging pile in the next room.... Off now, to faire une machine.
Your Comments:
...Meantime, do you know the word for "stack" in another language? And, do you like to stack stuff neatly... that is, are you "maniaque" ("fussy") or are you more the messy type? ("bordélique"... whoops, Jean-Marc tells me I'm not supposed to say that word). Anyway, thanks for sharing....
P.S.: Did you spot any coquilles (errors) in this--or a previous--post? Corrections are always welcome. Please use the comments box, below, and thanks in advance!
Shopping:
(What we Francophiles tend to bring back from France...)
café au lait bowl: to drink our morning up like the natives
Book: Using French synonyms
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Empiler and entasser in Spanish are also synonyms. ‘Apilar’, ‘amontonar’ and ‘hacinar’ would be 3 translations... depending on the context you will pick one of those.
‘Apilar’ is to stack things, usually into certain order.
‘Amontonar’ would be more in a messy and tight way (also used to describe people stuck in a room or place).
‘Hacinar’ is used mostly to describe when a lot of people are or live in a small surface or place (literally one over the other).
If I understand correctly, ‘empiler’ (apilar) is more used for things and ‘entasser’ (amontonar - hacinar) for people.
Posted by: Andrea | Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 03:42 PM
I bought my tasse in Limoges back in 1987. It is very pretty with my French name in gold on the side. (French name is Jeanne)
Posted by: Joan | Sunday, September 07, 2008 at 04:05 PM