French Word of the Day

... for today is:

rocambolesque

meaning  "incredible,  fantastical,  over-the-top".  As in:  "Richard Curtis,  un élu du Parti républicain à la Chambre des représentants [..],  a présenté sa démission après un rocambolesque feuilleton impliquant un prostitué" (from Têtu).

What an absolutely brilliant word!  And it gets better:  the word is derived from "rocambole":

roc·am·bole –noun
a European plant,  Allium scorodoprasum,  of the amaryllis family,  used like garlic.
Also called giant garlic.
(From the Random House Unabridged Dictionary,  via Dictionary.com)


Isn't that lovely?  But what is so incredibly fantastical about a big shallot,  I hear you ask?  It can't be so big as to inspire dumbfoundment and disbelief,  surely?

Well,  no.  The name of the leek-like vege was used as the name of the title character in a series of bestselling stories in the mid-nineteenth century by one Ponson du Terrail.  The stories were,  indeed,  rocambolesque.  More here

The vicomte Ponson du Terrail  (whose own name is quite a gem in itself)  seems to have chosen this name for his character because the word was already being used in a figurative sense.  The nineteenth-century Littré dictionary (available online here) quotes two meanings,  "ce qu'il y a de plus piquant dans quelque chose" and "populairement:  et toute la rocambole,  et tout le reste",  both of which probably contributed to the vicomte's choice.

There.  Isn't language fun?