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

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

There she said to him: "From now on I shall tutoyer you."

From The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein by Alfred Lichtenstein

I was half inclined to array myself in drab, and tutoyer the first of the body I chanced to encounter in my walks abroad.

From Mystic London: or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis by Charles Maurice Davies

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

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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