Re: OT: French/English etymology question: "sauf"/"save"

En réponse à Roger Mills :


>I knew the word "paume" existed but was unsure of its meaning-- there used
>to be a museum in Paris devoted to the Impressionists, called the "Jeu de
>Paume"-- I believe the collection is housed elsewhere now and the museum as
>such no longer exists. It was an old royal building IIRC and "paume" was
>supposed to mean "pawn" (the chess piece).....perhaps it was where Marie
>Antoinette played chess when she wasn't pretending to be a milk-maid---
>çehambi, payi kukusap çakoni yu!!!  :-))
As Remi already said, "Jeu de Paume" has never had anything to do with 
chess. It was a game related to the Basque pelota (actually an ancestor to 
the Basque game), and has survived nowadays as a game played with wooden 
rackets and a handmade cloth ball, a bit between squash (in that it's 
indoors and you may hit the walls) and tennis (in that the opponents are in 
front of each other and separated by a net). Check 
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/jan00/tennis.html for 
a few photos. But indeed, it was originally played with bare hands, hence 
the name. Where did you hear that "paume" was related to "pawn"? (that's 
"pion" in French)

And according to http://www.paris.org/Musees/JeudePaume/, the museum still 
exists (I've never heard of it disappearing at all!).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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