{"id":18711,"date":"2026-05-22T12:14:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18711"},"modified":"2026-05-16T12:27:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T19:27:40","slug":"tutoyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2026\/05\/22\/tutoyer\/","title":{"rendered":"tutoyer"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Merriam-Webster defines the verb <i>tutoyer<\/i> as \u201cto address familiarly.\u201d But it comes more specifically from (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/tutoyer\">as Wiktionary puts it<\/a>) addressing someone in French \u201cusing the informal second-person pronoun <i>tu<\/i> rather than the formal <i>vous<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>I was going to say that there\u2019s no equivalent in English, but it turns out that there is an English verb <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/thou#Verb\"><i>thou<\/i><\/a>, meaning \u201cTo address (a person) using the pronoun <i>thou<\/i>, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>The opposite of <i>tutoyer<\/i> is <i><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/vouvoy\">vouvoy<\/a><\/i> or <i><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/vousvoyer\">vousvoyer<\/a><\/i>, also written as <i>vouvoyer<\/i> or <i>voussoyer<\/i>: \u201cTo address (someone) in French using the formal second-person pronoun <i>vous<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>See also <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/T%E2%80%93V_distinction\">T\u2013V distinction<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/vouvoiement\">vouvoiement<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18712,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18711\/revisions\/18712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}