{"id":19389,"date":"2020-06-26T17:28:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T17:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=19389"},"modified":"2020-06-26T21:27:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T21:27:21","slug":"purple-fleas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=19389","title":{"rendered":"Purple Fleas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/puce.gif\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" alt=\"une puce puce (a purple flea)\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\"><\/p>\n<p>What do the words purple and flea have in common?<\/p>\n<p>Well in French, there is one word &#8211; <strong>puce<\/strong> [pys] &#8211; that means both purple and flea. It also means (micro)chip or bullet point.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few expressions featuring <strong>puce<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>march\u00e9 aux puces = flea market<\/li>\n<li>ma puce = my love, sweetie, honey, dear, sweetheart<\/li>\n<li>puce \u00e9lectronique = microchip<\/li>\n<li>puce d&#8217;ordinateur = computer chip<\/li>\n<li>carte \u00e0 puce = smart card<\/li>\n<li>puce m\u00e9moire = memory card<\/li>\n<li>puce d&#8217;eau = water flea<\/li>\n<li>puce de sable\/mer = sand flea<\/li>\n<li>liste \u00e0 puce = bulleted list<\/li>\n<li>pucer = to chip, tag<\/li>\n<li>aller faire t\u00e9ter les puces = to go to sleep<\/li>\n<li>donner la botte aux puces = to go to bed<\/li>\n<li>avoir la puce \u00e0 l\u2019oreille = to be vigiliant<\/li>\n<li>mettre la puce \u00e0 l\u2019oreille = to suspect, worry<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you were so inclined, you could say: <em>Ma puce, une puce puce puce une puce puce avec une puce puce<\/em>, or &#8220;Sweetie, a puce flea is tagging a puce flea with a puce tag&#8221;, but that would be rather silly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Puce<\/strong> comes from the Old French <em>pu(l)ce<\/em> (flea), from the Latin <em>p\u016blicem<\/em>, from <em>p\u016blex<\/em> (flea), from the Proto-Indo-Euopean <em>pl\u00fasis<\/em> (flea). This is also the root of the English word flea, via the Proto-Germanic <em>*flauhaz<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The colour puce is a dark redish-brown or a brownish-purple. It was first used to refer to this colour in about the 17th century in French, and possibly a lot earlier, and in the 18th century in English. It refers to the colour of bloodstains on flea-ridden bedding which would appear as a result of the fleas biting people and leaving their droppings or being squashed.<\/p>\n<p>Puce was apparently a favourite colour of Marie Antoinette, and became fashionable in 19th century Paris.<\/p>\n<p>There are a couple of other words that sound simliar to <strong>puce<\/strong>: <strong>pouce<\/strong> (thumb, inch) and <strong>pousse<\/strong> (growth, shoot). Both are pronounced [pus] though, so there should be no confusion.<\/p>\n<p>Sources: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/dictionary.reverso.net\/french-english\/puce\">Reverso<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/puce\">Wiktionary<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Puce\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do the words purple and flea have in common? Well in French, there is one word &#8211; puce [pys] &#8211; that means both purple and flea. It also means (micro)chip or bullet point. Here are a few expressions featuring puce: march\u00e9 aux puces = flea market ma puce = my love, sweetie, honey, dear, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,34,44,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-old-french","category-proto-germanic","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19389","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=19389"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19404,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19389\/revisions\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}