manqué

A ''manqué'' (feminine ''manquée'', from the French for "missed") is a person who has failed to live up to a specific expectation or ambition. It is usually used in combination with a profession: for example, a career civil servant with political prowess who nonetheless never attained political office might be described as a "politician manqué". It can also be used relative to a specific role model; a second-rate method actor might be referred to as a "Marlon Brando manqué".

Overview

The term derives from the past participle of the French verb ''manquer'' (to miss, to fail, to lack). In English, it is used postpositively, that is, following the noun it modifies in the manner of most adjectives in French.

The British political writer and former M.P. David Marquand described the mid-20th century Labour politician Aneurin Bevan as a "statesman manqué", while the magazine '' Private Eye'' referred to journalist Janet Street-Porter as an "architect manquée".

The ''Collins Dictionary'' gave the example of a manager as an "actor ''manqué''", while the ''Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases'' cited the ''Times'' magazine in 1996 as describing a " subway genius" as "a writer manqué since many of his chosen citations deal with creating literature". Arising from the inscription on Plato's door in Ancient Greece, "let no one devoid of geometry enter here", the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes has been described as typifying a "mathematician ''manqué''".

In Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita'', the narrator, Humbert Humbert, reminisces, "At first, I planned to take a degree in psychiatry as many ''manqué'' talents do; but I was even more ''manqué'' than that . . . and I switched to English literature."

As failure

In French ''manqué'' is sometimes applied to someone who has failed to gain professional status - such as ''un médecin manqué'' (a failed doctor) - whereas, in English, it need not have that pejorative implication. In the game of roulette the set of numbers from 1 to 18 is described as ''manque'' (no accent), meaning that the ball has "failed" to land in one of the higher (19–36) slots.

Manky

The slang ''manky'', meaning "inferior" or "dirty", is thought to be linked in some way to ''manqué'', possibly from the Scots word ''mank'' (maimed or defective) but maybe via Polari. The ancestor of all these words is the Latin ''mancus'' (maimed or crippled; and, by transference, imperfect or incomplete''Cassell's New Latin-English English-Latin Dictionary'' (D. P. Simpson, 3rd ed 1964)).

References

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manque
French words and phrases