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grue de cacao

In my never-ending quest to improve my French, I had some friends over for dinner last night and was asking them what the word โ€˜grueโ€˜ meant.

After consulting le dictionnaire franรงais (aka: mon ma bible), the only definition we came across was that a grue was a โ€˜craneโ€™โ€”as in the long-limbed bird.

Curiously, itโ€™s sometimes used a slang for a โ€˜working womanโ€™, if you know what I mean. Or one who is โ€˜facileโ€˜.

So how does any of that relate to ground up cocoa beans?

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14 comments

    • sigrid

    euhm, โ€˜gruรฉโ€™ (with accent aigu) refers to cocoa beans and โ€˜grueโ€™ (without accent) is what you looked for in the dictionnaryโ€ฆ ;-)

    • Anne-Laure

    โ€œGruรฉโ€
    Feves de cacao sechees, degermees, decortiquees et concassees grossierement.
    Il existe 2 types de gruรฉ: le gruรฉ vert non grille et le gruรฉ torrfie, grille.

    • sigrid

    ps: oh, and itโ€™s โ€˜ma bibleโ€™โ€ฆ :-P

    • David

    Oops!

    Well, gruรฉ isnโ€™t in my dictionnaire normal but Iโ€™ll add that to my dictionnaire culinaire.

    btw: Hereโ€™s an interesting description of the accent aigue. Since symbols need to be HTMLโ€™d, unless you type in the html for the symbols, it looks like mixed-up symbols on my blog. (Apologies to French readers, and merci for the corrections and advice.)

    Now if someone could just tell me how to fix that in Movable Type!โ€ฆ

    • Crisanne

    Darn those all caps!!

    • Barbara

    And here I thought maybe this cacao was so good youโ€™be be willing to sell your body for it!

    • Vรฉronique

    Iโ€™m French and Iโ€™ve just learned a new word. Thank you all! (Sigrid, I think that gruรฉ is not in many dictionaries. Itโ€™s not in โ€œLe Petit Robertโ€ for a start.)

    • David

    Vรฉronique: Well, itโ€™s not in my Robert Pratique either, which boasts 120,000 traductions.

    I say we storm the Acadรฉmie Franรงaise first thing monday morningโ€”en masse!

    • Lynn

    You reminded me of when I was telling a neighbor, newly from Japan, that certain parts of the city had hookers. Her English / Japanese dictionary told her that there were trawling ships in downtown Seattle.

    • sigrid

    David, you can write accents even in html using these codesโ€ฆhere

    :-)

    • dodo

    Iโ€™ve been where those cocoa beans are grown, its about an hour drive from my house :D

    • Gideon

    Thanks for the lesson Iโ€™ve learnt 2 words today. I remember in Spain a friend of mine confusing pato (duck) with puta(whore) causing much consternation in a restaurant we frequented.

    • David

    Gideon: Iโ€™m not sure I understandโ€”which of the two were you trying to order??

    dodo: Lucky you! Those are great beans.

    Sigrid: Believe it or not, I dream in html. (I know it that well!)

    But thanks for the link for readers who wish to comment using accents and the like.

    Lynn: hmmmโ€ฆI wonder why so many words โ€˜soundโ€™ like words for โ€˜working womenโ€™ in so many different languages?
    I guess no oneโ€™s immune to the effects of globalization
    : )

    • bellagourmet

    LOL! Just wanted to comment that this section of comments greatly amused me! Thanks for the wit and the laughs! :)

A

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