tutoyer

American  

[too-twah-yay, ty-twa-yay] / ˌtu twɑˈjeɪ, tü twaˈjeɪ /

verb (used with object)

tutoyered, tutoyed, tutoyering

1. to address (someone), especially in French, using the familiar forms of the pronoun “you” rather than the more formal forms; address familiarly.

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Etymology

Origin of tutoyer

1690–1700; < French, to address as tu and toi (the familiar singular forms for “you” in French)

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

tutoyer tutoyering

“I am Dominique. Just call me Dominique. Not Madame—Dominique. I will tutoyer you. You can tutoyer me, too,” she says, indicating that we’re all to use the informal form of address.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 1, 2016

"I should not have recognized her, and I don't dare to tutoyer the young lady!"

From Strong as Death by Guy de Maupassant

It is his pleasure to tutoyer the guests, to amuse himself by pretending to serve them, only to bring the wrong dishes, or none at all.

From The Merry-Go-Round by Carl Van Vechten

She colored, remembering the lesson and her own shrewd guess at the lady's meaning, and how, as she was led to infer, to tutoyer, to say thou, inferred a certain degree of intimacy.

From The Red City A Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington by S. Weir (Silas Weir) Mitchell

This cafe was a friendly, homely, sociable spot, where it seemed the habit of the master of the establishment to tutoyer his customers, and the practice of the cus- tomers to tutoyer the waiter.

From A Little Tour in France by Henry James

I remember being present when an Englishman and his wife, much accustomed to good French society, but unacquainted with this nuance, were laboriously tutoyering each other.

From Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

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