monsieur

monsieur

See also: Monsieur

English

Etymology

From French monsieur.

Noun

monsieur (plural monsieurs or messieurs)

1. (dated) A man, especially a French gentleman.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick:

     Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs!

Related terms

• monseigneur

Anagrams

• inermous

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French

Etymology

From mon (“my”) + sieur, from the oblique case of Old French sire (cf. also seignor), ultimately from Latin senior.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mə.sjø/, (archaic, sometimes used jocularly) /mɔ.sjø/, (obsolete) /mɔ̃.sjø/

• audio

  (file)

Noun

monsieur m (plural messieurs)

1. mister, sir (a title or form of address for a man, used with or without the name in direct or third-person address)
2. gentleman

   Il y a un monsieur pour vous voir.

   There's a gentleman here to see you.

Usage notes

A custom held that it was impolite to use Monsieur with a family name (e.g. Monsieur Dupont) in direct address from a hierarchical inferior to a superior, unless it was needed to disambiguate. Instead, one should simply address the person as Monsieur. This custom may now be obsolete.

Unlike in English, Monsieur is frequently used without a name as a polite reference to a man in the third person, notably in official registers:

Monsieur s'est présenté à l'urgence à 18 h 12.

The/This gentleman/The patient attended the emergency room at 6:12 p.m.

Although un/le monsieur is used as a common noun to mean "a/the gentleman," using the word une/la madame to mean "a/the lady" is considered childish language. Instead, une/la dame is used.

Synonyms

• M.
• M^r

Derived terms

• mesdames et messieurs
• Monsieur Durand
• monsieur je-sais-tout
• Monsieur Propre

 

Related terms

• monseigneur
• sieur
• sire

Descendants

(Some of these may be derived from Middle French.)

• Saint Dominican Creole French: mouché
  • Haitian Creole: mesye, msye
• → English: monsieur
• → Fula: musel
• → Hausa: mùshê
• → Ladino: musyu
• → Ottoman Turkish: موسیو‎ (mösyö)
  • Turkish: mösyö
• → Romanian: musiu
• → Russian: месье́ (mesʹjé), мсьё (msʹjo)

See also

• madame
• mademoiselle
• monseigneur

Further reading

• “monsieur”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• muerions
• remuions