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 can’t tutoyer for the life of me.”

From Molly Brown's College Friends by Nell Speed

He married a girl as good as she was beautiful, an artist's ideal, whom he had the greatest difficulty to get Fanchette to tutoyer.

From Her Royal Highness Woman by Max O'Rell

But he was growing warm, and began to tutoyer Hereward.

From Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley

She raised her head as if she were surprised to hear him tutoyer her, and replied, as she looked at him fixedly: "Perfectly."

From The Grandee by Armando Palacio Valdés

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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