![\"Take](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/pew.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One thing that came up in the French Conversation Group last night was church pews, and particularly how uncomfortable they are. We discovered that in French a pew is un banc (d’\u00e9glise)<\/em>. <\/p>\n Banc<\/em> also means seat or bench, and can mean other things in combination with other words: <\/p>\n – banc de sable = sandbank Banc<\/em> comes ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *b\u02b0eg-<\/em> \u200e(to bend, curve, arch), which is also the root of banque<\/em> (bank) and banquet<\/em> (dinner, reception, banquet), as well as bank, banquet and bench in English, and related words in other languages.<\/p>\n The French equivalent of pull up a pew or take a pew (take a seat, sit down), is prends-toi une chaise<\/em> or tire-toi une b\u00fbche<\/em> (pull up a log). Are there other ways to say this?<\/p>\n Sources: Reverso<\/a>, Wiktionary<\/a>, WordReference.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One thing that came up in the French Conversation Group last night was church pews, and particularly how uncomfortable they are. We discovered that in French a pew is un banc (d’\u00e9glise). Banc also means seat or bench, and can mean other things in combination with other words: – banc de sable = sandbank – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– banc des accus\u00e9s = dock (in court)
\n– banc des t\u00e9moins = witness box
\n– banc de touche = dugout
\n– banc des avocats = (legal) bar
\n– banc de brouillard = patch of fog
\n– banc de sable = sand bar<\/p>\n