Les gilets jaunes: a footnote

[shewhomust]

I have nothing to say about the substance of the news from France: but I realised yesterday morning why the British media are translating les gilets jaunes as 'yellow vests'. They aren't vests - except, of course, that in US English, they are, a waistcoat is a vest. Who knows why our reporters have got this usage from their American colleagues, but evidently they have. I shared this revelation with durham_rambler.

He was unimpressed. "You know what they are, don't you?"

"They're high-vis jackets."

"Yes," he said, "but specifically they are the high-vis jackets that French law requires you to keep in your car alongside the emergency warning triangle. We have a couple in our car."

He's right, of course.

Comments

[cmcmck]

The whole yellow vest thing originates with Sarko- he it was that made them compulsory in all French cars and caused trouble back then too.

The French social memory is not a short one!

[shewhomust]

That's true, but I hadn't realised the jackets were so recent an innovation!

[lamentables]

I am so accustomed to doing simultaneous translation from USian, that I had genuinely not noticed that they were saying ‘vests’ and would have said that the movement is called ‘yellow waistcoats’. I just asked himself what the movement is called: ‘yellow jackets?’

[lamentables]

I have previously wondered if we are losing ‘waistcoat’, at least as a general term. My sample size is very small, but it is my observation that if you want something to wear under your suit jacket the gentlemen’s outfitters will sell you a waistcoat, but if you want a sleeveless down or fleece jacket the outdoor shop will offer gilets.

[shewhomust]

I did wonder whether 'vest' was specific to the waistcoat that is the third piece of a three-piece suit.

but if you want a sleeveless down or fleece jacket the outdoor shop will offer gilets...

If I wanted one of those, I would probably have asked for a fleece! But I just (in the course of this conversation) came across 'gilet' as an English term; though it doesn't seem to have made it into the news reports. I'm hearing 'gilets jaunes' mangled to a greater or lesser degree (the BBC can cope with 'gilets', but is uncertain about the vowel sound of 'jaunes': someone obviously made the mistake of writing it down, because by ear it isn't hard at all - but I digress...), or 'the so-called yellow vest movement' (so-called by whom? not its members, obviously) all of which betrays a dissatisfaction with the available terminology. Whather this is because 'waistcoat' is becoming unfamiliar, or because it feels too specifically linked to that three piece suit (or something else entirely) I don't know.